Kushiel's Chosen

I cannot say in certainty, not being bred to the worship of Asherat-of-the-Sea. I was faint and delirious, stunned by the fall and bereft of air, but this much I know to be true. As the last vestiges of control gave way in my beleaguered body, my mouth opening and closing helplessly against an influx of seawater, seeping past my choking throat into my lungs, I heard something; a sound, a movement. A deep, steady thrumming filled the waters, the sound of a strong current, bent around the rocks of La Dolorosa.
    A current, a strong current.
    The currents around La Dolorosa are strong and uncertain ...
    So the Captain of the Darielle had said; so it was. Deep, deep beneath the surface of the waves, a powerful current flowed, and it clasped me like a pair of arms, drawing me away from the isle.
    Away, and up.
    My head broke the surface of the water and I drew in one ragged, whooping gasp of air, expelled it choking, flailing my arms, not realizing in my frantic efforts that the sea in which I had surfaced was calm, calm and still, save for the smooth, steady pull of the current. 'Twas all I could do to breathe, coughing up seawater and feeling it trickle, bitter and warm, down my chin. My lungs burned, my stomach burned, and somewhere in the vicinity of my ribs, a sharp pain reestablished itself. I churned my legs, struggling to keep myself afloat, and realized I truly was alive, alive and breathing.
    A solid object bumped at my arm, making me start and thrash at the water, and my reaching fingers encountered wood, sea-sodden and slimy to the touch, but solid and floating, a great beam-sized length of it, one end sticky with pitch.
    Tito's torch, caught in the same current.
    "Thank you," I whispered hoarsely, my throat raw with pain. I clung to the torch, wrapping both arms around it, desperate as any shipwrecked sailor clinging to a broken spar. It dipped, but floated still, bearing my weight enough to keep my head above water. "Thank you."
    Only then did I think to look about me, gazing over the waters to see where I was. When I saw, I gasped.
    Asherat's current was no jest. Without rocks or shore to provide resistance, it flowed like a silent river, swift and sure, charting an invisible course across the sea. La Dolorosa lay well behind me, a black, jagged form marked by tiny pinpricks of flame.
    One was moving lower than the others, scrambling down the crags toward the base.
    Joscelin, I thought in agony as the current bore me away, sweeping me further out to sea. Oh, Joscelin!
    Though it was in vain, I cried out, shouting over the bobbing waves until my ragged voice failed and the pain in my ribs rendered it hard to draw breath. No one could have heard at that distance, over the pounding surge at the base of La Dolorosa. It didn't matter. When I could do no more, I laid my cheek on my arms, still wrapped about the torch, and wept with exhaustion, drifting on the relentless current.
    I lived through that night, and Blessed Elua grant I never pass another like it. I daresay in any other season, I would have died of exposure, but it was late summer yet and the sea was mild. In the final hour before dawn, the temperature of the air dropped and I shivered violently. My head ached, my jaw ached and sharp pains shot through my midsection; I cannot even begin to describe the pain in my arms, locked about the floating log of Tito's torch. With a truly heroic effort, I managed to drag my sodden skirts to my waist and wind a length of woolen fabric about the torch, securing me to it.
    There were things moving in the deep. I heard them and sensed them-twice, something large brushed against my bare legs, making me shudder with fear and revulsion. Asherat-of-the-Sea, I prayed, you have spared me; let your creatures treat me gently!
    Whether 'twas Asherat's mercy or some other protection, no harm came to me from the denizens of the sea. And although I thought that night would never end, in time it did. I had not known, until the sky began to turn grey in the east, which way the current bore me. In the utter blackness of clouded night, I'd harbored some faint hope that it had bent to carry me alongshore, mayhap in sight of land. But the scrap of pale orange rising on the far horizon told me otherwise; it had borne me out to sea.
    I remembered the captain's tale of the merchant who had drowned off La Dolorosa and washed ashore on the Illyrian coast, and knew fresh fear. Cloud-hidden and ghostly, the sun crept slowly above the