Kushiel's Justice by Jacqueline Carey Page A

strange to us. The curse is broken now. It is a lengthy tale, but Phèdre broke it for all time with the Name of God she found in distant Saba. There is still a Master of the Straits—Hyacinthe, who was her childhood friend—but the Straits themselves are open, and he is an ally.
    “What of the others?” Alais asked. “Did they come later, too?”
    “Others?” The bard’s creased eyelids flickered.
    “Somewhat I heard my father say once.” Alais frowned. “The Mag . . . Maghuin—”
    “Hush.” Firdha raised one hand. “The folk of Alba are divided into four,” she said, repeating her lesson. “And the Cullach Gorrym are eldest among them.”
    There followed a lengthy tale of how Lug the warrior led his people to follow the mighty Black Boar, and the boar swam the Straits, and the hump of his back was like an island moving toward the setting sun, and Lug and his people built hide boats and covered them with black tar, and followed. And then more, about how Lug stood upon the shore and cast his spear, and where his spear struck, a spring of sweet water bubbled from the earth to form a river, and there Bryn Gorrydum was founded.
    It was a fine tale and one of many such as I would hear over the course of the following months, filled with ancient heroes, magical beasts, and sacred springs. I listened to it with pleasure, but with a nagging curiosity at the back of my thoughts, too.
    “So who are these
others
?” I asked Alais afterward, when Firdha had departed. “And why didn’t she want to speak of them?”
    “I don’t know.” Alais leaned down to scratch Celeste’s ears. The wolfhound was lounging at her feet, content to doze in a patch of sunlight. “I remember the name, though. It was Maghuin Dhonn, Brown Bear. That’s why I thought mayhap he was talking about a different people, and not just another tribe among the Four Folk.”
    “What did he say say?”
    Alais shook her head. “I couldn’t hear, really. He was talking to Talorcan and they were being quiet. When he saw me, they talked of somewhat else.” She regarded Celeste, who thumped her tail obligingly. “There’s unrest in Alba, you know.”
    “Still?” I asked lightly. “I thought I’d settled all that.”
    There was a touch of amused pity in Alais’ smile. “Not all of it.”
    “So tell me.”
    She shrugged. “Talorcan says it’s only old clan feuds and that there’s always fighting of that sort in Alba. But Dorelei says there are some who feel Father is too beholden to Terre d’Ange.”
    “Funny,” I said wryly. “That sounds familiar.”
    “I know.” She smiled again, but sadly this time. “Are other countries truly so different, Imri?”
    “Yes,” I said. “But people aren’t.” I kissed the top of her head. “Don’t worry, Alais. They’ll love
you
.”
    “I hope so,” she said softly. “I had a bad dream about a bear, once.”
    “A true dream?” I asked.
    “No,” she said. “A nightmare.”
    “We’ll protect you,” I said. “Won’t we, Celeste?” The wolfhound lifted her head, brown eyes clear in the slanting sunlight. Her tail thumped again, stirring gleaming motes of dust.
    “I hope so,” Alais repeated.
    The time I spent among the Sabaeans and the Yeshuites was more pleasurable. Phèdre had indeed been a gracious hostess, opening her house for a series of salons where they might meet and converse.
    There were not as many Yeshuites in the City of Elua as there once were. Their numbers have dwindled during my lifetime as hundreds, then thousands, set forth toward the distant northeast in accordance with a prophecy. Far north, farther even than the farthest reaches of Skaldia. It was the one thing above all others that perplexed the Sabaeans.
    “North!” Morit exclaimed. “If this Yeshua was the
mashiach
, why would he send the Children of Yisra-el
north
? Did Moishe toil for forty years in the desert to win our people a berth of snow and ice? I do not believe it.”
    There were nods and