Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “I am not yours.”

  “I speak in hope and anticipation, as a suitor may.” His smile bunched his fat face tighter.

  “Or with the trickery of a rat.”

  “Rats,” he observed, sighing, “are low, shy, straightforward creatures. Very limited. For trickery, one wants a man. Or a woman. Trickery, treachery … truth, triumph … traps for bears …”

  She twitched at this possible reference to Foix. “You want something. The gods’ tongues can grow quite honeyed, when they want something. When I wanted something—when I prayed on my face, arms outflung, in tears and abject terror—for years—where were You then? Where were the gods the night Teidez died?”

  “The Son of Autumn dispatched many men in answer to your prayers, sweet Ista. They turned aside upon their roads, and did not arrive. For He could not bend their wills, nor their steps. And so they scattered to the winds as leaves do.”

  His lips curved up, in a smile more deathly serious than any scowl Ista had ever seen. “Now another prays, in despair as dark as yours. One as dear to me as Teidez was to my Brother of Autumn. And I have sent—you. Will you turn aside? As Teidez’s deliverance did? At the last, with so few steps left to travel?”

  Silence fell between them.

  Ista’s throat was clogged with rage. And more complicated things, a boiling mixture even she could not separate and name. A stew of anguish, she supposed. She snarled through her teeth, “Lord Bastard, you bastard.”

  He merely grinned, maddeningly. “When the man arises who can make you laugh, solemn Ista, angry Ista, iron Ista, then will your heart be healed. You have not prayed for this: it’s a guerdon even the gods cannot give you. We are limited to such simples as redemption from your sins.”

  “The last time I tried to follow the gods’ holy addled inadequate instructions, I was betrayed into murder,” she raged. “But for You, I wouldn’t need redemption. I don’t want to be part of You. If I thought I could pray for oblivion, I would; to be smudged, blotted out, erased, like the sundered ghosts, who die to death indeed, and so escape the world’s woe. What can the gods give me?”

  His brows twitched up in an expression of remarkably disingenuous goodwill. “Why, work, sweet Ista!”

  He stepped closer; beneath his feet, the boards creaked and groaned, dangerously. She almost retreated just for the fearful vision of the pair of them crashing through the floor into the chamber beneath. He held his hands lightly above, but not quite touching, her shoulders. She noticed, with extreme annoyance, that she was nude. He leaned forward over his belly, its equator bumping hers, and murmured, “My mark is on your brow.”

  His lips brushed her forehead. The spot burned like a brand.

  He has given me back the gift of second sight. Direct, unguided perception of the world of spirit, His realm. She remembered how the print of the Mother’s lips had seared her skin, just like this, in that long-ago waking vision that had led to such disastrous consequences. You may press Your gift on me, but I need not open it. I refuse it, and defy You!

  His eyes glinted with a brighter spark. He let his fat hands drift down over her bare back, and hugged her in tighter to his girth, and bent again, and kissed her on the mouth with an utterly smug lascivious relish. Her body flushed with an embarrassing arousal, which only infuriated her more.

  The dark infinities abruptly vanished from those eyes, so close to hers that they crossed. A merely human gaze grew wide, then appalled. Learned dy Cabon choked, recovered his tongue, and leapt backward like a startled steer.

  “Royina!” he yelped. “Forgive me! I, I, I …” His gaze darted around the chamber, flicked to her, grew wider still, and sought the ceiling, the floor, or the far walls. “I don’t quite know where I am …”

  He was not, now, her dream, she was quite certain of it. She was his. And he would remember it vividly when he awoke, too. Wherever he was.

  “Your god,” snapped Ista, “has a vile sense of humor.”

  “What?” he asked blankly. “He was here? And I missed Him?” His round face grew distraught.

  If these were real dreams, each the other’s … “Where are you now?” asked Ista urgently. “Is Foix with you?”

  “What?”

  Ista’s eyes sprang open.

  She was lying on her back in the dark bedchamber, tangled in her fine linen sheets and Cattilara’s translucent nightclothes. Quite alone. She spat a foul word.

  It was drawing toward midnight, she guessed; the fortress had fallen silent. In the distance, filtering through her window lattices, the faint sawing of insects grated. A night bird warbled a low, liquid note. A little dull moonlight seeped in, rendering the room not quite pitch-black.

  She wondered whose prayers could have drawn her here. All sorts of persons prayed to the Bastard as the god of last resort, not just those of dubious parentage. It could be anyone in Porifors. Except, she supposed, a man who’d never woken from an exsanguinated collapse. If ever I find who has done this to me, I’ll make them wish they’d never so much as recited a rhyme at bedtime …

  A cautious creak and scuff of steps sounded on the stairs to the gallery.

  Ista fought her way clear of the sheets, swung her bare feet onto the boards, and padded silently to the window that gave onto the court. She unbarred the wooden inner shutter and swung it back; fortunately, it did not squeak. She pressed her face to the ornate iron lace of the outer grating and peered into the court. The waning moon had not yet dropped below the roofline. Its sickly light angled onto the gallery.

  Ista’s dark-adapted eyes could make out clearly the tall, graceful form of Lady Cattilara, in a pale robe, unattended, gliding along the balcony. She paused at the door at the far end, gently swung it open, and slipped within.

  Am I to follow? Sneak and spy, listen at windows, peer in like a thief? Well, I will not!

  No matter how benighted curious You make me, curse You …

  By no force could the gods compel her to follow Lady Cattilara to her afflicted brother-in-law’s bedchamber. Ista closed the shutter, turned, marched back to her bed. Burrowed under the covers.

  Lay awake, listening.

  After a few furious minutes, she rose again. She silently lifted a stool to the window and sat, leaning her head against the iron lattice, watching. Faint candlelight leaked through the gratings opposite. At length, it went out. A little time more, and the door half opened again, just wide enough for a slim woman to twist through. Cattilara retraced her steps, descended the stairs. She did not appear to be carrying anything.

  So, she oversaw the sick man’s care. Not beneath a chatelaine’s duties, for a man so highborn, an officer so essential, a relative so close and, apparently, esteemed by her husband. Perhaps Lord Illvin was due some midnight medication, some hopeful treatment that the physicians had ordered. There were a dozen possible mundane, harmless explanations.

  Well, a handful.

  One or two, at least.

  Ista hissed through her teeth and returned to her bed. It was a long, galling time before she slept again.

  FOR A WOMAN WHO HAD STILL BEEN FLITTING AROUND THE CASTLE secretly at midnight, Lady Cattilara appeared at Ista’s chambers much too soon after dawn, bursting with cheerful hospitality and the plan of dragging Ista to the temple in the village for morning prayers of thanksgiving. With an effort, Ista suppressed the twinging tension the young marchess’s presence induced in her. When Ista arrived in the flower-decked entry court to discover Pejar holding a horse for her, it was too late to beg off. Muscles still sore, feeling altogether decrepit, in anything but a thankful mood, she let herself be loaded aboard. Pejar led her mount at a decorous pace. Lady Cattilara walked ahead in the procession, head high, arms swinging freely, and had breath to spare to sing a hymn with her ladies as they descended the treacherous twisting path.

  The village of Porifors, tightly crowded behind its gates, was clearly a town-in-waiting for either more walls, or a reign of peace in which walls might be dispense
d with. Its temple likewise was small and old, the altars of the four gods hardly more than arched niches off the central court, the Bastard’s Tower one of those temporary outbuildings that had lasted beyond all expectation, or desire. Nevertheless, after the services the old divine was eager to show the dowager royina all of his temple’s little treasures. Ferda signed Pejar to attend Ista and excused himself, claiming he would not be gone long. Ista’s lips twitched at his timing.

  The treasures proved not so little after all, as the temple was recipient of largesse from many of Lord Arhys’s more successful raids and forays. Lord Illvin’s name, too, came up often in the divine’s enthusiastic inventory. Indeed, yes, the crime that had laid him low was a terrible, terrible event. Alas, that the rural temple physicians here could do naught for him, though there was still hope that wiser men imported from one of the greater cities in Ibra or Chalion might yet work wonders, when the agents Lord Arhys had dispatched finally succeeded in getting one here. The divine had run through his most interesting, or lurid, tales of provenance and had progressed to a detailed account of the building plans for a new temple, pending peace and the march and marchess’s patronage, before Ferda returned.

  His face was grave. He paused to kneel briefly in the niche of the Lady of Spring, his eyes closing and his lips moving, before coming to Ista’s side.

  “Excuse me, Learned,” Ista ruthlessly overrode the divine’s monologue. “I must speak to my good officer-dedicat.”

  They returned to the Lady’s niche. “What, then?” asked Ista quietly.

  His voice was equally quiet. “The morning courier from Lord dy Caribastos has ridden in. No news of Foix or dy Cabon, or of Liss. I therefore ask your leave to take two of my men and search for them.” He glanced across in judicious admiration at Lady Cattilara, who had taken over the task of listening politely to the divine. “You are clearly in the best of hands, here. It will only take a few days to ride up to Maradi and back—Lord Arhys undertakes to lend us some good, fresh horses. I’d expect to return before you are ready to travel again.”

  “I … mislike this. I do not care to dispense with your support, should some emergency arise.”

  “If Lord Arhys’s troops cannot protect you, my handful could do no more,” said Ferda. He grimaced. “As we have proved, I fear. Royina, under ordinary circumstances I would defer to you without hesitation.” His voice grew lower still. “But then there is the matter of the bear.”

  “Dy Cabon is better fit to deal with those complications than either of us.”

  “If he lives,” said Ferda heavily.

  “I am sure he does.” Ista decided she didn’t want to explain how she knew. Worse, she could not likewise vouch for Foix.

  “I know my brother. He can be forceful and persuasive. And tricky, if the first does not serve. If … his will is not quite his own, and yet is informed by all his wits … I’m not sure dy Cabon could handle him. I can. I have ways.” His face was lightened, temporarily, by a brief fraternal grin.

  “Mm,” said Ista. Persuasion, it seemed, ran in the family.

  “And then there is Liss,” he said more vaguely.

  What there was about Liss, he did not expand upon, and Ista mercifully forbore to prod him. “I do dearly wish she were back by my side, that is so.” She added after a moment, “And dy Cabon.” Perhaps especially dy Cabon. Whatever the god was about, the bewildered young divine figured in it as well.

  “Then may I have your leave, Royina? Dedicat Pejar can serve all your needs in this minor court, I am sure. And he is eager enough to do so.”

  Ista let the little flash of Cardegoss arrogance pass without comment. Were Porifors an ordinary rural court, Ferda would doubtless be correct. “Do you mean to go now?”

  He ducked his head. “At once, please you. If there is any problem, the sooner I arrive, the better.” He added to her frowning silence, “And if there isn’t, then the sooner I may return.”

  She sucked on her lower lip in doubt. “And there is, as you say, the matter of the bear.” Traps for bears, the god had said. His accursed pet, escaped. No point in praying to the god for protection, either; if he could directly control his wild demons fled into the realm of matter, he presumably would, and not let his divine weakness depend upon human weakness.

  “Very well,” she sighed. “Go on, then. But return quickly.”

  He offered a strained smile. “Who knows? I may meet them coming down the road from Tolnoxo and be back before nightfall.” He knelt and kissed her hand, gratefully. By the time she drew a second breath, the flapping of his vest-cloak had already vanished out the temple’s doors.

  Luncheon, Ista discovered to her dismay, was to be a fête in the dowager royina’s honor in the village square, complete down to a choir of village children offering a selection of songs, hymns, and earnest and not especially rhythmic local dances. Lord Arhys was not present; the young marchess did the honors for the castle, in a warm style obviously much approved by the proud and anxious parents. More than once, Ista caught her looking at the littlest ones with open longing in her eyes. When the urchins had stamped through their last erratic caper, and Ista had had her hands kissed by all and sundry, she was loaded back aboard her horse and permitted to escape. Surreptitiously, she wiped upon the animal’s mane the slimy offering left on her fingers by the waif with the cold. She was by this time almost glad to see that horse. Almost.

  DISMOUNTED AGAIN BACK IN THE FLORAL ENTRY COURT, ISTA WAS just trying to decide whether she was annoyed or glad for Lady Cattilara’s delicately worded suggestion that perhaps a lady of the royina’s age would care for an afternoon nap, when a whoop at the gate cried against its closing.

  “Hallo, Castle Porifors! Courier from Castle Oby!”

  Ista spun on her heel at the familiar, boisterous voice. Riding through the gate on a fat and lathered yellow nag was Liss. She wore her castle-and-leopard tabard, and held up a leather pouch in the official style, its wax seals bouncing on their strings. Her shirt, beneath the tabard, was as wet with sweat as the horse, and her face flushed with sunburn. Her mouth went round as she gazed about at the pots of color and greenery.

  “Liss!” Ista cried in delight.

  “Ha, Royina! So you are here after all!” Liss kicked loose her stirrups, swung her off leg up over her horse’s neck, and jumped down. Grinning, she knelt courtier-fashion at Ista’s feet; Ista raised her by her hands. It was all she could do not to hug her.

  “How came you here, on this horse—did Ferda find you?”

  “Well, I came here on this horse, of course, great slug that it is. Ferda? Is Ferda safe? Hallo, Pejar!”

  The sergeant-dedicat at Ista’s elbow grinned back broadly. “The Daughter be thanked, you made it!”

  “If the tales I heard were true, you all were in worse case than I ever was!”

  Ista said anxiously, “Ferda left here not three hours ago—you must have passed him on the road to Tolnoxo, surely?”

  Liss’s brow wrinkled. “I came in by the road from Oby, though.”

  “Oh. But how came you to be at—oh, come, come, sit with me and tell me everything! How I have missed your currying and grooming!”

  “Yes, dearest Royina, but I must first hand off my letters, since I am a courier again for today, and see to this beast. It isn’t mine, five gods be thanked. It belongs to the courier station midway between here and Oby. I should be grateful for a bucket of water, though.”

  Ista motioned to Pejar, and he nodded and dashed off.

  Cattilara and her ladies drifted up. The marchess smiled in inviting puzzlement at the courier girl, and at Ista. “Royina … ?”

  “This is my most loyal and brave royal handmaiden, Annaliss of Labra. Liss, make a curtsey to Lady Cattilara dy Lutez, Marchess of Porifors, and likewise these …” Ista went down the ranks of Cattilara’s ladies, who goggled at the courier girl. Liss complied with a series of friendly little dips at the string of introductions.

  Pejar dashed up with a s
loshing bucket. Liss grabbed it in passing and plunged her whole head in. She came up for air with a sigh of relief, and her soaked black braid swung droplets in an arc that nearly spattered Cattilara’s recoiling ladies. “Ah! That’s better. Five gods, but Caribastos is a hot country in this season.” She allowed the bucket to continue to the horse, giving its side a hearty pat.

  Pejar said eagerly, as the horse shoved at him getting its nose in the water, “We were sure you must have warned that crossroads village, but where you went after that, we could not guess.”

  “My good courier mount was done in by the time I reached there, but my tabard and chancellery baton persuaded them to lend me another. They had no soldiers fit to fight the Jokonans, so I left them to save themselves and rode east as fast as I could whip the poor blowing plow horse. Did the villagers escape harm?”

  “They were all fled by the time we got there, close to sunset,” said Pejar.

  “Ah, good. Well, right after that same sunset I reached a courier station on the main road to Maradi, and once I’d convinced them I wasn’t raving, they got the hunt up. Or so I thought. I slept there, and rode in to Maradi the next morning at a saner pace only to find the provincar of Tolnoxo just then leading his cavalry out the gates in pursuit. As fast as the Jokonans were moving, I greatly feared he was already too late.”

  “It did prove so,” agreed Ista. “But a courier reached Castle Porifors in time for Lord Arhys to set an ambush along the line of the Jokonan retreat.”

  “Yes, that must have been one of the fellows who rode directly from my courier station, five gods rain blessings on their wits. One of them said he was native to this region. I’d hoped he might know what he was about.”

  “Did you hear anything of Foix and Learned dy Cabon?” asked Ista urgently. “We never saw them again after we hid them in that culvert.”

  Liss shook her head, frowning. “I told of them at the courier station, and I warned Lord dy Tolnoxo’s lieutenants, when we passed, to be on watch for them both. I was not sure then if they’d been taken by the Jokonans, as you were, or if they had got away, or would follow the road forward or back or strike into the scrub, or what. So I went to the temple at Maradi, and found a senior divine of Learned dy Cabon’s order, and told her of all our troubles, and that our divine was likely out on the road and much in need of help. And she undertook to send some dedicats to seek them.”