Kushiel's Chosen

monstrous unfair, that a man should be so beleaguered for a terrible accident. Kazan Atrabiades had not meant to slay his brother. And yet I had seen for myself how the curse had come home to him, fair or no. It was his right, to seek expiation, and not my place to protest the means of it. And who was I, to judge such a thing? I had sought atonement betimes myself, at the hands of Kushiel's priests; indeed, the Unforgiven of Camlach reckoned me the instrument of the same.
    Still, it was something I understood, to purge one's memories in pain. It was somewhat else altogether, to offer the memories themselves on the altar of atonement. Mayhap the prospect would not have unnerved me so, had I not spent time in La Dolorosa, but I had seen madness at close hand there and come to reckon it a boon companion, and the thought of risking it voluntarily filled my heart with terror.
    The Kore made a sign, and the drums started, and flutes and cymbals, while the Hierophant stepped forth to point the way to a path up the mountain. Initiates bearing torches moved ahead in pairs, pausing at stations along the path to light the way for the procession that followed. So we made our way up the mountain, a steep path and narrow, while the lights of the Palace dwindled below us.
    Kazan walked alone, with priestesses before and behind him. More than once, he stumbled, but no aid was given him. Trailing at the rear, I straggled to see and yearned to help him, guessing without being told that it was forbidden. I was not sure he would make it, for the path was treacherous, but he did.
    Some distance from the summit, we reached our goal; a cavern, dark-mouthed and vast, larger than those that I had seen lining the harbor walls. There was a little plateau before it, and it was there that the Kore halted. Torchlight cast weird, twisting shadows on the threshold of the cavern, but it was deep, and the rear of it remained dark and impenetrable.
    With trembling fingers, Kazan divested himself of clothing until he stood mother-naked before the Kore, and she purified him with water and anointed his brow with oil. He knelt, and she cut a lock of his hair with a sharp little knife, tying a red thread around it and setting it on a tray, offering an invocation for his safety. Then she placed around his neck a single cowry shell on a leather thong, to dedicate him to Mother Dia.
    It went on for some time, and I found myself blinking with weariness, half-hypnotized by the torchlight and the whispering music that seemed to come from the very mountain, for the initiates had scattered across the face of the rocks. At length, the Kore offered a final libation of wine and took a step back from the cavern.
    "It is commenced," she said softly, her words pitched to echo in the cavern's mouth. "Go forth, Kazan Atrabiades, and seek to be free of it."
    From where I stood, I saw Kazan hesitate, then square his shoulders.
    He entered the cavern, and I saw him no more.

SIXTY
    It is a long vigil the Kritians maintain during the thetalos.
    For a considerable time, I stood with the others, waiting and watching, but I was leg-weary from the climb, and my body ached still in every part from the pounding it had endured aboard our storm-tossed ship. At length I gave up, and sat down in the hollow of a boulder, still warm from the day's sun. One can find comfort anywhere, when one is tired enough. The Kritians stood unfaltering, the Kore and her priestess on one side of the cavern's mouth, the Hierophant on the other, and agile initiates perching on crags like goats on a mountainside.
    The music was muted to a thrumming murmur. The torches burned lower, sparking and crackling softly. Every now and then came the whispering sound of someone shifting-they were human, after all-but otherwise, nothing moved save the stars overhead and no other sound was heard.
    Truly, I did my best to remain awake; it never occurred to me that I would fail. I was fraught with worry on Kazan's behalf and plagued as well by a thousand other concerns. I went over in my mind the speech I would make to the Archon of Phaistos, searching for the right words to present my plea. My rhetorical training was in Caerdicci, not Hellene, and I wanted to be as polished as I might when I entered "the wide harbor and the company of men," as the Hierophant said. They are ancient in the craft of statesmanship, Hellenes, and Kritians most ancient of all.
    I polished my speech in my mind until it shone, and fell asleep