Naamah's Curse

“You’re not,” he observed. “But then, you’re a half-blood. No matter.” He waved the issue away. “I’ll come to your father’s people in time. You know, there is very, very little written or known about the Maghuin Dhonn. And yet one bear-witch managed to change the entire course of the Vralian Church.”



Since I didn’t know what to say, I held my tongue.



“For all their conversations, the Rebbe Avraham was never able to persuade Berlik to accept salvation through Yeshua’s sacrifice,” the Patriarch continued. “That is when it came to me that if I could succeed where he failed, it would restore the Church to its rightful path. I let it be known that I would pay traders or diplomats for any word of the Maghuin Dhonn resurfacing.”



I met his gaze. “And they did.”



“Not for many long years,” he said ruefully. “It was during that time, when my sister succumbed to temptation and fell into sin, that I turned my attention to Terre d’Ange. Now, about Elua ben Yeshua and the Fallen Ones, much is written. I began reading the lesser-known prophets. Do you recall I spoke of Elijah of Antioch yesterday?”



“Yes.”



Rostov’s eyes took on a hectic light. “Do you know what apostasy means, Moirin?” I shook my head. “It is the sin of abandoning one’s faith in God.” He steepled his fingers and touched them to his lips. “It is not uncommon to find scripture that names Cassiel of the Fallen Ones the Apostate whose return to God will bring about the return of Yeshua ben Yosef. Elijah of Antioch believed otherwise. He believed that it is Elua ben Yeshua himself who is the Apostate, that it is the Fallen Ones, and most especially the Great Whore Naamah, who led him astray.”



“I see,” I said politely.



“No, you don’t. Not yet.” He smiled at me. “But I am giving you the tools to understand, and in time, you will.”



“I am trying, my lord.”



The Patriarch shook his head. “You are dissembling in the hope of fooling me. Don’t worry, child. God is patient, and so am I. I came to understand that my sister’s disgrace was an opportunity in disguise. Like you, my nephew is afflicted by Naamah’s curse, but I have taught him that it may be repudiated through prayer and discipline. Once you have accepted salvation, I will do the same for you.”



Unable to hide my feelings, I looked away.



“You are angry.” He gave me another indulgent smile. “Only consider this, Moirin.” He tapped the sheaf of papers on his lap. “Long after I had begun to lose hope that the Maghuin Dhonn would ever resurface, you appeared. Not only a witch born to Berlik’s folk, but the daughter of a priest of the Great Whore herself. And your deeds!” He fanned the pages. “Fornicating with men and women alike….. well, that is no surprise in Terre d’Ange, bastion of depravity as it is. But wreaking false miracles and summoning demons?” He raised his brows. “Surely your presence is a sign that God is testing us to see if we are prepared for his son Yeshua’s return.”



“There were no false miracles,” I said in a low tone. “The gift of healing was Raphael’s, not mine.”



Pyotr Rostov peered at his notes. “By all accounts, he was a skilled physician, but he credited your magic with allowing him to achieve miraculous cures. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. When you make your full confession, you may tell me how you used your dark arts to tempt him into the sin of hubris. Do you know that word?”



“Yes.” I shifted on the stool, my chains rattling. “It is a Hellene word for excessive pride that leads to folly. Cillian taught it to me.”



“Cillian…..” He glanced at his notes again. I suspected it was just for show, and that he had my entire history memorized. Not for the first time, I cursed the fact that gossip was the life-blood of Terre d’Ange, and precious little I had done in my life was hidden from common knowledge. “Cillian mac Tiernan, son of the Lord of the Dalriada. That’s a good place to begin your confession. He is the first man you ensorceled, is he not?”



“I didn’t ensorcel him. He was my friend.”



“It says here—”



“I don’t care what it says!” I sighed. “How did you find me, anyway? The Tatar lands are a long way from Terre d’Ange.”



“Indeed.” The Patriarch nodded gravely. “I received these reports only last autumn, for they were many months on the road. It was in my thoughts to petition the Duke of Vralsturm to fund an expedition to Terre d’Ange in the spring to seek you out. Instead…..” A look of awe settled over his features. “Before winter fell, traders from the east brought rumors of war in Ch’in, and a jade-eyed foreign witch who served the Emperor. I did not think there could be two such in the world. So I had these chains forged over the course of the winter, and come spring, I sent Brother Ilya and Brother Leonid eastward to investigate.”



“Yes, I know,” I said bitterly.



“Do you not see that it is a sign from God that they found you so swiftly, so near to this place?” he asked with the inexorable logic of his faith. “You were already on a path toward salvation, Moirin. You just didn’t know it.”



My palms were sweating, and I rubbed them against the prickly woolen fabric of my dress. “Are you so certain you know your God’s will? Mayhap I was sent here for some other purpose.”



“No.” The Patriarch shook his head. “You were not. I am not immune to doubt, but in this, I am certain. There have been other signs that the days of conflict that will accompany Yeshua’s return are nigh. I have sensed it ever since the King of Terre d’Ange had the temerity to raise a whore, an unrepentant whore, to the royal throne.”



I flushed.



He ruffled his notes. “Yes, you knew her intimately, did you not? Take heed from her fate, Moirin mac Fainche, lest God strike you down, too.”



A jolt of unexpected horror ran through me, and I found myself staring at him. “What fate?” I raised my voice. “What fate?”



“You didn’t know.” It was a statement, not a question. The Patriarch of Riva met my gaze without flinching. He didn’t smile, not exactly, but his lips curled and his face took on a satisfied expression I would come to think of as his creamy look, the one that meant he was reveling in the pain he was about to inflict upon me for my own good.



It came and went in the flicker of an eye, but it was there, and already I dreaded the words that would follow it.



He spoke them. “The D’Angeline whore-queen Jehanne de la Courcel died in childbirth over a year ago.”



It hit me like a fist to the belly. I wasn’t aware of toppling from the stool, wasn’t aware of falling. Only that there was cold stone pressed against my cheek, and I couldn’t breathe. I lay curled around my misery and shoved my manacled hands against my stomach, gasping for air, my body punishing itself.



Jehanne! Ah, gods.



All this time.



No.



I wanted to weep, and couldn’t. The grief was too vast, too unanticipated. Not Jehanne, my unlikely rescuer, my mercurial Queen. I dragged a ragged gulp of air into my lungs, expelling it with a low keening sound.



I wanted to believe it was a lie.



I knew it wasn’t.



Chair legs scraped. “You are upset,” Pyotr Rostov said with regret from somewhere above me. “Forgive me, I should have realized it had been a very long time since you had news from your homeland, Moirin. I will leave you to your grief, and we will resume on the morrow.”



He left.



TWENTY-THREE



The days that followed were a blur.



I refused to eat, refused to talk, turning my face to the wall of my cell. There was no thought or strategy behind it, only the profound, endless ache of grief.



Jehanne. My lady Jehanne.



All this time….. ah, gods! She had been frightened, so frightened. Frightened of impending motherhood, frightened of childbirth. And I had left her anyway, obeying the call of my bedamned destiny.



If I had stayed, I could have saved her. Raphael de Mereliot and I could have saved her.



It was a thought that haunted me, circling back upon me no matter how hard I sought to avoid it. We had done it before, Raphael and I. Together, with my magic channeling his gift for healing, we had saved a young mother bleeding excessively during the act of giving birth.



I wondered if he had been there at the end.



I suspected he had.



King Daniel would have sent for him. It was true, even without my aid Raphael was a skilled physician. In their own ways, they had both loved her, and Jehanne had loved them, too.



And me.



I tortured myself with imagining it. Jehanne, weakening, her exquisite face drained of blood. Raphael, rubbing his healer’s hands together to generate warmth, laying them on her, trying in vain to staunch the bleeding. King Daniel hovering over the tableau in anguish, all his solemn poise undone.



And all the while, a thing unsaid lying between them.



If Moirin were here…..



Folk came and went. The Patriarch tried to coax me into talking. Valentina and Luba took turns trying to coax me into eating, putting spoonfuls of hot broth to my lips. I ignored them, keeping my mouth stubbornly closed. For a mercy, no one tried to force me.



I ached at the unfairness of it. Even if I’d known what would happen, I couldn’t have chosen otherwise. How many more would have died in the war in Ch’in if I hadn’t been able to help free the dragon? Thousands, likely.



Or mayhap there would have been no war; mayhap Emperor Zhu would have surrendered, believing he had lost the Mandate of Heaven. Master Lo and Bao would have failed in their mission. My lovely princess Snow Tiger would have been put to death, and the dragon’s splendid spirit would have died with her, ceasing to exist forevermore.



Black Sleeve and Lord Jiang would have been free to loose the dreadful weapons of the Divine Thunder on the world, and the world would have become a far more terrible place. I couldn’t weigh Jehanne’s life against such a fate.



But oh, gods! It hurt.



If it hadn’t been for Aleksei, I don’t know how long I would have kept my fast. It wasn’t that I sought death, at least not consciously. But I hadn’t much will to live, either. Everything I loved had been taken from me. This last blow was simply more than I could bear.



Every day, Aleksei came and read to me from the Yeshuite scriptures, beginning with the tale of the world’s creation, and Edom the First Man and his wife, the All-Mother, Yeva. At first I ignored him, too, sitting huddled on the hard stone floor of my cell with my manacled arms wrapped around my knees and my face turned toward the wall.



He persisted, hunkering on the wooden stool that he might be closer to my level, reading in a pleasant, melodious voice.



I could ignore him, and I could let the words he spoke wash over me, but I couldn’t ignore the presence of Naamah’s gift in the room between us. Every time his voice faltered, I felt it.



In those brief moments of silence, I felt his gaze on me.



And I felt Naamah’s gift respond within me. It was not desire on my part, not even close. My grief ran too deep. I hadn’t even begun to cope with the shock and pain of being torn away from Bao’s side so unexpectedly, so soon after being reunited with my stubborn peasant-boy and the missing half of my soul, before being struck with the news of Jehanne’s death.



But it was a response to his desire, an instinctive urge toward life as simple and natural as a plant yearning toward the sun.



On the third day, or mayhap the fourth, Aleksei’s voice faltered, and he let the silence stretch.



When it didn’t break, I shifted, turning away from the wall to meet his gaze.



He flushed, and I saw his throat work as he swallowed hard. “Your queen….. the babe was a girl. I thought you would want to know.”



Grief caught in my chest. “Is she alive and well?” I whispered. “Jehanne’s daughter?”



Aleksei nodded and looked away from me, fidgeting with the leather-bound book in his hands. “Before….. before she died, the queen asked that the babe be called Desirée, so she would always know she was loved and wanted.”



Something within me broke, and for the first time since I’d heard the news, I wept in great, racking sobs—a storm of sorrow, my head bowed against my knees, tears soaking the coarse wool of my dress. Ah, gods! Everything I had told Jehanne was true. She had been a great deal kinder, wiser, and more gracious than she pretended, and for all her fears, she would have been a good mother.



Even in dying, Jehanne had found a way to let her daughter know she was loved.



Aleksei waited awkwardly for my sobs to subside. It was a long while before I got myself under control, rubbing my tear-stained face.



“Thank you,” I said to him. “It was kind of you to tell me.”



He looked away, looked back at me. “I wish you would relent. My uncle feels terrible about telling you thusly.” His color rose again, his fearful gaze skidding away. “He did not know you cared for her so.”



I leaned back against the wall, resting my head on the cool stone. I felt tired and hollow, and weak with hunger. “That’s not true.”



His blue-violet eyes widened. “Of course it is!”



“No.” I moved my head from side to side. “I saw his face, Aleksei. He heard the fear in my voice when I begged him to tell me what he meant by Jehanne’s fate. He knew. He relished the pain it would inflict.”



His flush deepened with anger, his voice dropping to a lower register. “You seek to sow doubt. I do not believe it.”



I shrugged wearily. “Believe what you like.”



Aleksei closed his eyes, his lips moving in a silent prayer. When he opened those glorious blue eyes again, they were luminous with the inner light of his faith. “I will not be swayed,” he said in a firm tone. “You were sent to us as a test and a trial, and I will not fail. God loves you, Moirin, and his son Yeshua gave his life that you might know it. I am trying; we are all trying. Do you but open your heart and listen, and you will hear the call to salvation.”