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what mettle Ysandre’s spirit is tempered, and I could not ask for any finer.
    No, my discontent lay with the shadow on my own soul.
    It is no one’s fault but my own that I underwent the ceremony of the thetalos on the island of Kriti, and came face-to-face with the chain of sorrow and suffering that had arisen from my actions. If I had not transgressed, I would have been purged of the knowledge and cleansed to face life renewed and forgiven. I know, for I saw what transpired in the heart of Kazan Atrabiades, who was my friend; friend and lover, and one-time captor. But I had transgressed, and I could not be absolved. The mystery into which I stumbled was not meant for me. What I saw, I must remember and endure.
    So I had, for ten years, and the pain of that knowledge had lain buried. Now, Hyacinthe’s plight had split the healed flesh and the scars on my soul bled anew.
    I went, when I had the time, to my last ally among the Yeshuites, the mystic scholar Eleazar ben Enokh. He is held in awe and disdain among his people, Eleazar ben Enokh. Awe, for he is among the last of his kind and his knowledge is prodigious for all that he is young to it; disdain, for he looks backward and inward, pondering half-forgotten mysteries while the rest of his folk look increasingly to the north and the future. It is with Eleazar that I began studying the Akkadian language; and that too, his people disdain.
    They are wrong, I think-Eleazar thinks it too. There are few tongues older than that which is spoken among the scions of the House of Ur, whose hero Ahzimandias led his people out of exile in the desert to reconquer their ancestral lands. Khebbel-im-Akkad, they call it; Akkad-that-is-reborn. Once upon a time, they were near-kin, the Akkadians and the Yeshuites. The Habiru, they were called then, the Children of Yisra-el; their language is still called the same. But when the Akkadians conquered, the Children of Yisra-el were dispersed and flung to the winds, their Twelve Tribes disbanded, Ten of the Twelve lost and the purity of their mother-tongue diffused.
    So it is said, at any rate.
    When the empire of Persis arose and overthrew the Akkadians, the royal court of the House of Ur fled, deep into the Umaiyyat, where they were succored by the Khalifate of the Umaiyyat. And there, for a thousand years, they maintained their traditions and language unaltered, and nurtured revenge. It was in Eleazar ben Enokh’s heart that somewhere in the deep past, Akkadians and the Children of Yisra-el sprang from the same root. El, their deity was called; El, that is: God, whose True Name is unknowable. Now the Yeshuites think less on the Name of God, having affixed their faith to His son Yeshua ben Yosef, and the Akkadians care little for El, having reconquered Persis in the name of Shamash, the Lion of the Sun, in accordance with Ahzimandias’ vision.
    But Eleazar ben Enokh, a Yeshuite who dwelt in the City of Elua, kept his heart attuned to his One God and courted Him with profound meditation, fasting and reciting hymns, composed in Habiru and Akkadian alike, seeking betwixt the two to find the original root words, the First Word of Creation that spoke the world into being-for that, he believed, was the Name of God.
    I sat with him as he did, for we had become friends, Eleazar and I, of the unlikeliest sort. I knelt on mats in his prayer-room, abeyante , as I was taught long ago in the Night Court, sitting on my heels with the skirts of my velvet gown composed around me. Eleazar knelt too, and rocked, inclining back and forth and keening all the while in his strong voice. Betimes he arose and danced about the prayer-room, hopping and spinning, his spindling limbs akimbo beneath his black robes, head thrown back in ecstasy.
    I daresay it looked humorous; I know his wife Adara smiled, ducking her head to hide it as she brought water and crusty bread bought fresh at the market into the prayer-room to make ready for her husband who would be ravenous when he broke his fast. To her credit, it never disturbed her that her husband kept company with the foremost courtesan in the City of Elua.
    “Father of Nations!” Eleazar gasped in Habiru, “Lord of the Divine Countenance! Hear me, Your meager worshipper, and grant me the merest glimpse of Your throne! Ah!” He went rigid, kneeling, arms outflung. “Abu,” he whispered, reverting to Akkadian, “Abu El, anaku basû kussû.” God, my Father, let me come before your throne.
    A look of bliss