Kushiel's Dart

closer to the old tales, to the workings of fate.
    "Yes," I whispered. "Yes, my lord."
    "No."
    I was not sure, for a second, who had spoken; it sounded so little like Hyacinthe. My Prince of Travellers, light-hearted and careless; no longer, not since Moiread's death. He gave a choked laugh and ran his fingers through his black ringlets. "You summoned me, my lord. I am here. I will stay."
    The Master of the Straits was silent.
    And I knew, then, that everything before had been but play.
    "No," I whispered, turning to Hyacinthe. My hands rose, shaping his face, almost as familiar as my own. "Hyacinthe, no!"
    He held my wrists gently. "Breidaia dreamed me on an island, Phedre, do you remember? I couldn't see the shore. The Long Road ends here, for me. You may have unraveled the riddle, but I am meant to stay."
    "No," I said, then shouted it. "No!" I turned to the Master of the Straits, fearless in my despair. "You seek one to take your place; you posed this riddle, and I have answered! It is mine to answer in full!"
    "It is not the only riddle on these shores." There was a sorrow in his voice, eight hundred years old. The sun stood overhead, casting the Master of the Straits' face into shadow as he bowed his head. "Who takes my shackles, inherits my power. Name its source, if you would be worthy to serve.
    Joscelin turned aside with a sharp cry; I think, until then, he thought there was still a way he might answer. I raised my face to the sun, thinking, remembering. The library in the tower, the lost verses. Delaunay's library, where I had spent so many sullen hours, forced to study when I'd rather have entertained patrons; I'd have given anything, to have them back now. Alcuin, hair falling like foam to curtain his face, poring over ancient codices. Joscelin's voice, unwontedly light, a rare glimpse of the Siovalese scholar-lord's son he'd been born. He's got everything in here but the Lost Book of Ra^iel. Can Delaunay actually read Yeshutte script ?
    The pieces of the puzzle came together; I lowered my gaze, blinking.
    "It is the Book of Raziel, my lord."
    The Master of the Straits began to turn my way.
    "Only pages." Hyacinthe's voice was like a hollow reed sounding. "Pages from the Lost Book of Raziel, that the One God gave to Edom, the First Man, to give him mastery over earth and sea and sky, and took away for his disobedience, casting it into the depths." The Master of the Straits stopped and considered him. Hyacinthe gave his desperate laugh, black eyes blurred with the dromonde , seeing at last. "A gift of your father, yes? The Admiral calls him the Lord of the Deep, and tosses him gold coins, for he is superstitious as sailors are. But the Yeshuites name him Prince of the Sea; the angel Rahab, they call him, Pride, and Insolence, who fell, and was cleaved and made whole, who fell, but never followed." The words came faster, tumbling from his lips, his blank gaze seeing down the tunnel of eight centuries. I remembered a blazing fire, the sound of fiddles skirling, Hyacinthe playing the timbales while an ancient woman cackled in my ear. Don't you know the dromonde can look backward as well as forward ? "He begot you, my lord, upon a D'Angeline girl, who loved another. Who loved an Alban, son of the Cullach Gorrym, a mortal, one of Earth's eldest. Is it not so?"
    "It is so," the Master of the Straits murmured.
    Hyacinthe ran his hands over his face. "The Straits were still open then, free waters ... he took her here, to this place, this isle, the Third Sister, still untouched by the Scions of Elua, and she bore you here . . . though she loved you, she sang in her sorrow and captivity like a bird in a cage, until her song carried across the waters, and the Alban who loved her sailed the Straits to free her . . ." He fell silent.
    "They died." The words rose around us, filled with the sea's deep surge, ceaseless and sorrowing. "The waves rose, their boat overturned, and the deep water took them. I know where their bones lie." The Master of the Straits gazed across the sea from his vast, open temple, the fluid shifting of his features fixed in grief.
    "And the One God punished Rahab's disobedience, and bound him to His will," Hyacinthe whispered. "But for the heart of a woman he could not sway and his own lost freedom, Rahab took his vengeance, and laid a gets upon you, my lord. He brought up scattered pages, from the deep, to give you mastery over the seas, and he bound you here, that Alba and Terre d'Ange would