Bücher online kostenlos Kostenlos Online Lesen
Kushiel's Avatar

Kushiel's Avatar

Titel: Kushiel's Avatar Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Jacqueline Carey
Vom Netzwerk:
a pleasant smile.
    “She is for the Mahrkagir?” he asked.
    “I have sworn it.” It was Joscelin who spoke in crude Persian, his voice raw.
    The Drujani with the finger-bones murmured to his leader, who listened intently and nodded. The girded one, I thought, must be some manner of novice, an apprentice-priest. “The embers of despair gutter in your spirit, lordling,” the leader said to Joscelin. “Is it as the goat-thief says? Are you willing to swear your sword unto darkness?”
    I bit my tongue, longing to translate for him, but Joscelin understood well enough. The skin was tight over his high cheekbones. “Drujan died and lives. I am dead to my family. If I may live again in the Mahrkagir’s service, his sword is mine.” There was genuine anguish in the words. How much truth? My heart bled to wonder. I could not begin to reckon the price of what I’d asked of him.
    It was enough to convince the apprentice-priest.
    “Men will embrace anything to live,” he said in a young, hard voice. “Even darkness. Even death. What of the woman?”
    “You see her.” Joscelin gestured at me. “As faithless as she is beautiful, a servant of our goddess of-” the word twisted in his mouth, “-whores.”
    It was the Habiru word he used, but close enough, it seemed. The Drujani conferred and settled on a translation, and the apprentice-priest laughed, high and breathless, before whispering to the leader.
    Who smiled his unpleasant smile. “The Mahrkagir will be pleased,” he said, putting up his bow. “You see, his mother was a whore.” He jerked his chin at Tizrav. “We will believe you, lick-spittle, and ride to Demseen Fort to count the guards. If you are lying, we will find you and have much sport. If you are not...” He smiled again. “Well, she may pray that you were.”
    And with that, they were gone, melding into the darkness as swiftly as they’d appeared, only the faint rattle of a pebble dislodge by a pony’s hoof marking their passage.
    Tizrav exhaled with relief and picked up the skin of beer with both hands, drinking deep.
    “Is it over?” I asked him.
    “No.” He lowered the skin and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But it’s begun, and we are still alive.”
    We were four more days in the mountains, and saw no further signs of human inhabitants; birds of prey, mainly, circling high above the crags, and on the ground, hares and sometimes martens, quick and darting. It was cold, though not so cold that the streams had frozen. Where we could not find water, we melted snow scooped from deep crevices. In the valleys, our horses pawed the hard turf and cropped at yellow grass, dead and frost-bitten, but nourishing nonetheless. Tizrav set snares in the evenings, catching hares when he might, and with these we supplemented our stores of dried foods.
    On the journey, we spoke seldom. I rode without complaining, feeling I had no right. Tizrav, swathed in layers of felted wool, was scarce visible, his chin tucked into his chest, unlovely visage peering out beneath his thick woolen hat. Disdaining the cold, Joscelin rode bare-headed and silent, his mouth set in an implacable line.
    “Did you mean it?” I finally asked him, two nights after the Drujani had come.
    “What?” His tone was short.
    “What you said.” I hesitated. “That I was as faithless as I am beautiful.”
    “Ah,” he said flatly. “That.” He looked at me for a moment without speaking. “Mayhap. Phèdre ... what you ask of me-I do not know if I can do it. All I can do is seek a way, and the way is cruel.”
    Would that I did not understand; but I did. “What have I done to us?” I whispered.
    “I don’t know.” Bowing his head, Joscelin fiddled with a stiff buckle on his dagger-belt. “Do you want to turn back?”
    I did. With all my heart, I did. “No,” I said.
    He nodded without looking up. “Then do not ask me questions I cannot answer. I am Cassiel’s priest, and I have broken all his vows but one. You ask me to ride into the mouth of hell to keep it. I am doing what I can. Be satisfied, or be silent.”
    So it went between us.
    On the fifth day, we entered the plains of Drujan. Mayhap it is a more welcoming place in summer; I cannot say. If it was less harsh than the mountains, it was more dire, for here people lived and labored, and here we saw the shadow under which they made their existence. The land is arable and there were villages, at the center of grain-fields and fit pasturage for

Weitere Kostenlose Bücher