Kushiel's Avatar

silk. So had Nemuel done, I thought, on the plains of Jebe-Barkal. The priest stood waiting, sterner and taller in his regalia. I felt small, and tired. My muscles ached from the ordeal of rowing, and my hands were blistered and sore. There was no voice speaking between the cherubim, no presence of Elua; not even Kushiel to mark the way with his crimson haze.
    “I don’t know what to do, my lord,” I said humbly. “I am only a supplicant here. All I want is to free my friend.”
    The priest laid his hands on two corners of the massive lid and looked fixedly at me, nodding at the opposite side of the Ark. The silent cherubim gazed at one another.
    “The Name of God,” I whispered. If it existed, it lay within the Ark. I reached out with trembling hands, curling my fingers beneath the corners opposite the priest. This was the transgression that had blasted Nemuel, and all his descendants. “I am scared, my lord priest.”
    He made me no answer, watching and waiting, not unkindly. The gems on his breastplate winked, naming the Twelve Tribes, silent prayers and reminders to an unresponsive god. If it was a transgression, this act, it was one for which the priest had already born a lifetime of punishment. Had he tried it already? I could not know. My mouth was dry. Did I transgress here? If Adonai was merciful, I would only suffer the same. I licked my parched lips, thinking of the tongues I had mastered in my day. D’Angeline, Caerdicci, Hellene, Skaldic, Cruithne, all under Delaunay’s guidance; Habiru, Illyrian, Akkadian, Persian, Jeb’ez; even zenyan. The argot of Tsingani, the dialect of the Dalriada.
    All of this, I stood to lose.
    And Naamah’s arts, the arts of love. I remembered how Joscelin had kissed me in the bathing-pool. That, I could not even bear to think of losing.
    Oh, Hyacinthe, I thought. It is little, so little , compared to what you sacrificed. Forgive me my fear, that so ill becomes me. But I cannot help it, for it is so much of what I am, of what I have made myself. And I do not know what will become of us if I fail. With a silent prayer for forgiveness, I set myself and gritted my teeth, lifting with all my might. Terrified of succeeding, terrified of failing, I sought to raise the massive lid, my fingernails digging, bending beneath the weight of it. And on the opposite side, the priest of Aaron’s line bowed his head and lifted too, sinews standing out on his forearms, “Holy to Adonai” engraved glimmering on his sweat-beaded brow.
    We lifted together, and the lid rose. Inch by strenuous inch, it rose. My arms trembled. It rose. The space between the cherubim lay silent. The heavy golden lid, the mercy seat, was raised into the darkling air.
    Awkward and strained, I dared a glance inside the Ark. And there I saw the Luvakh Shabab , the Broken Tablets; fragments, grey shards of stone battered to gravel, not even a single word of text remaining intact. These were the Tablets inscribed by Adonai’s own hand? I would have wept, had I strength to spare. An empty chest with a heap of rubble at the bottom-such was the end of my quest. Such was the mystery Isis’ grief had guarded. Such was the secret the Sabaeans had hidden from the Eye of God for more than a thousand years.
    The rubble stirred of its own accord.
    I caught my breath and held it.
    My arms and back and shoulders ached with the strain of holding the lid aloft. Would that Joscelin were here! Truly, I had failed to reckon the cost of his labors. Two-thousand-year-old dust swirled in the gilded depths. The ancient rubble stirred, fragments of stone aligning, letters emerging; the Habiru alphabet, forming before my eyes to spell out the Name ... Yod, Alef, Quf, Lamed ... Nun? And, ah, Elua others among them I did not recognize! Kaf, Alef, more-too much, too fast, not even my Delaunay-trained memory could hold it, my facile tongue shaping the letters in vain, too slow, muscles trembling with the strain. Oh, unfair. A lost alphabet, letters I did not know, never etched by mortal hands. Twelve years’ of study, gone to no avail. How could I utter a sound I had never heard? I sought to remember their shape, but they were gone, fleeting, before I could capture them. The emergent letters in the golden shadow of the lid spelling out an unpronounceable Name, half-glimpsed. Tears of despair stung my eyes, and I blinked in a futile effort to see.
    Dust and rubble spoke; dust and rubble fell silent, returning to its component parts. My