Kushiel's Dart

and suppurating, weeping a clear fluid and refusing to heal. "Ah, I've one of mother's recipes will do for that!" the priest-healer laughed, digging around in his bag. He drew out a small stoneware jar of balm and unstoppered it. What was in it, I don't know, but it stank to heaven. Joscelin made a face at it, then looked questioningly at me over Lodur's head as the old man began slathering his hands and wrists with it.
    "He is a healer," I said in Caerdicci, for Selig's benefit; we kept up the pretence that Joscelin's Skaldic was inadequate for conversing. "Lord Selig wishes that you become well enough to teach him your manner of fighting."
    Joscelin bowed his head to Selig. "I look forward to it, my lord." He paused. "To teach the Cassiline style, I require my arms, my lord; or at least my vambraces. Wooden training daggers and sword will suffice."
    "The Skaldi do not train with wooden toys. I sent your arms to my smith, to duplicate their design. You shall have them when we spar." Selig cast a scowl at one of the White Brethren; he'd reclaimed Joscelin's sword, then, and been annoyed at its loss. "Are you done, old master?"
    "Oh, nearly." Lodur worked deftly, winding bandages of clean linen about Joscelin's balm-smeared skin. "He'll heal quickly. These D'Angelines, they've gods' blood in their veins. It's old and faint all right, but even a mere trace of it's a powerful thing, Waldemar Berundson."
    If I did not miss the warning in his words, Selig could not fail to heed it. "Old and powerful, and corrupted with generations of softness, old master. Their gods will bow their heads to the All-Father, and we will claim the magic of their blood for our own descendants, to infuse it with red-blooded Skaldi vigor."
    The old man glanced up at him, his one eye as wintry and distant as a wolfs. "May it be as you say, young Waldemar. I am too ancient to strong-arm the gods."
    I felt a chill run through me at his words. Whatever else was true, the old man had power, that much I knew. I felt it in that hut, creeping over my skin, whispering of the dark earth and the towering firs, of iron and blood, fox, wolf and raven. Lodur rose then, patting Joscelin kindly on the head, and gathered his things.
    At the center of the steading, he refused a ride back to his home in the woods, saying he would welcome the walk. I, shivering as always, could not credit his hardiness, but truly, his bare skin seemed unaffected by the cold. Selig was speaking to the White Brethren about some matter, so I took the chance to approach Lodur as he made ready to leave.
    "Did you mean it?" I asked him. "About the weapon?"
    No more than that did I say, but he knew what I meant and considered me, standing ankle-deep in snow. "Who knows the ways of the gods? Baldur the Beautiful was slain with a sprig of mistletoe, cast by an unknowing hand. Are you less likely a weapon?"
    I had no answer to that, and the old man laughed. "Still, if I were young Waldemar, I'd take the risk of you too," he added with a wicked grin, "and if I were not much younger at all, I'd ask you for a kiss."
    Of all the unlikely things, it made me blush. Lodur cackled again and struck out across the snow, staff in hand, walking briskly back the way we'd come. A strange man; I'd never met stranger. I was sorry not to see him again.
    For his part, Waldemar Selig responded to the whole encounter by regarding me with a new suspicion. It came out that night in bed, when he did not bid me to please him, but regarded me instead, tracing with one finger the lineaments of my marque. "Mayhap there is rune-magic in these markings, Faydra," he said, deceptively. "Would you say so?"
    "It is my marque, that says I am pledged to Naamah's service. All her Servants bear such, and there is no magic in it save freedom, when it is made complete." I held myself quiet, kneeling before him.
    "So you say." He laid his hand open across my back; it spanned a great expanse of my skin. "You say you were sold into slavery because you knew too much. I, I would merely kill you, were it so. Why do you live?"
    Melisande's voice came back to me, calm and distant. I'd no more kill you than I'd destroy a priceless fresco or a vase . "My lord," I whispered, "I am the only one of my kind. Would you kill a wolf with fur of purest silver, if it wandered into your steading?"
    He pondered it, then drew away from me, shaking his head. "I cannot say. Perhaps it was led by Odhinn, to my spear. I do not understand this thing you