Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “That was well thought of,” Ista said, her voice warm with approval.

  Liss smiled gratefully. “It seemed little enough. I waited a day at the chancellery’s office in Maradi, but no word came back from Lord dy Tolnoxo’s column. So I bethought me of a faster route south and volunteered to ride courier to Oby. I reckoned, since it was the greater fortress, you would most likely be rescued by its soldiers and brought there. Then I flew—I don’t think any courier has ridden that road faster than I did, that day.” She shoved a strand of wet hair out of her sunburned face, raking it back with her fingers. “All were still in suspense when I arrived at the fortress that night. But my labors were repaid next morning, when the letter came there from the march of Porifors that you were all safely rescued. Oby’s lord and men had gone out on patrol for the Jokonans, too, but they came riding back that afternoon.”

  “My father is the march of Oby,” observed Cattilara, an eager tinge leaking into her voice. “Did you see him?”

  Liss made her unique half bow, half curtsey again. “He is in good health, my lady. I begged the boon from him of riding courier to Porifors, so I might most speedily rejoin the royina.” She held up her pouch. “He saw me off at dawn this morning. I received this from his own hands. There may be something in here for you—ah.” Her eye brightened at the approach of Porifors’s castle warder, an aging, landless lordling who reminded Ista much of Ser dy Ferrej, except for being stringy instead of stout. The groom Goram followed in his wake. The warder took the pouch in charge, to Liss’s obvious relief, and hastened away with it, after directing the groom to assist with the courier’s horse.

  “You must be exhausted,” said Lady Cattilara, whose eyes had widened more than once during Liss’s account. “Such a frightening ordeal!”

  “Oh, but I love my task,” said Liss cheerfully, slapping her dirty tabard. “People give me fast horses and get out of my way.”

  Ista’s lips twitched up at this. Reason enough for joy, indeed.

  But at least it appeared that she hadn’t let Ferda go off on a fool’s errand, for all that he had missed Liss on the road. And that she could hope that by the time he reached Maradi, he would find his bear-ridden brother and his conductor safely in the temple’s charge there.

  Liss, attempting to follow her horse as Goram led it away, made little excusing bows in all directions.

  Ista said smoothly, “When my handmaiden has seen to her mount, she will be in need of a bath, as I was. And, I pray you, a loan of clothing as well. Her things were stolen by the Jokonans along with mine.” Actually, Liss’s extremely scant wardrobe had mostly been in her saddlebags. But Ista judged that Cattilara’s ladies’ noses were in the air at more than the reek of horses and sweat from the lowborn, high-riding girl.

  “And fodder, pray you, dear Royina!” Liss called over her shoulder.

  “It shall be worthy of your great ride, the fame of which shall reach Cardegoss itself in my next letter,” Ista promised.

  “So it is quick, it may be anything you please!”

  LISS WAS A LONG TIME IN THE STABLES, BUT AT LAST SHE PRESENTED herself at Ista’s new quarters. Cattilara’s ladies, local petty lords’ daughters who had nearly fallen over themselves for the honor of serving the dowager royina, were clearly less taken with the chore of serving Liss. But a bath Liss had, under Ista’s firm eye, in between snatching bites from the tray of bread, olives, cheese, and dried fruit, and sloshing down cup after cup of lukewarm herb tea. Her rank riding clothes were sent off with the servants to be properly washed.

  Cattilara’s castoffs suited Liss’s height and age much better than they did Ista’s, even if they were a trifle too generously cut in the chest for the riding girl. Liss laughed in delight and awe, waving about one trailing, delicate sleeve, and Ista smiled at her pleasure with the unfamiliar richness.

  One person’s delight in Liss was unalloyed; the medical acolyte finally had someone to assume the care of Ista’s hurts so that she might return to her neglected temple and family. Liss hadn’t finished drying before the acolyte finished her tutelage, turned over a supply of bandages and ointments, gathered her things, received a suitable vail from Ista for her pains, and scampered off for home.

  DINNER THAT AFTERNOON WAS PRESENTED IN A SMALLER CHAMBER off the courtyard of the star fountain, and proved to be an almost entirely female gathering, under Lady Cattilara’s dominion. No chair was left ritually empty.

  “Does Lord Arhys not dine tonight?” Ista asked as she was seated at the marchess’s right hand. Or ever? “I should think his tertiary fever would worry you.”

  “Not nearly as much as his military duties,” Lady Cattilara confided with a sigh. “He has taken some men on a patrol toward the northern border. My heart will be in my mouth till he returns. I am in agony inside with terror for him when he rides out, though of course I smile, and do not let him guess. If anything ever happened to him, I believe I would go mad. Oh.” She covered her gaffe with a sip of wine and held her cup up to Ista in salute. “But you understand, I’m sure. I wish I could keep him by my side forever.”

  “Is not his superior military craft a part of his”—admittedly appalling—“attractiveness? Hobble him, and you risk killing the very thing you admire in the attempt to preserve it.”

  “Oh, no,” said Lady Cattilara seriously. Denying, but not answering, the objection, Ista noted. “I do make him write to me every day, when he is gone. If he forgot, I should be quite cross with him”—her lips turned up, and her eyes sparkled with laughter—“for a whole hour at least! But he doesn’t forget. Anyway, he’s supposed to be back by nightfall. I’ll watch for him on the road from the north tower, and when I see his horse, my heart will stop choking me and start beating a thousand times a minute instead.” Her face softened in anticipation.

  Ista bit hard into a large mouthful of bread.

  The food, in any case, was excellent. Lady Cattilara, or her castle cook, at least did not attempt to ape the excesses, or worse, what they imagined to be the excesses, of Cardegoss court feasting, but served simple, fresh fare. There did seem to be more sweets tonight, which Ista could not fault, and which Liss plainly relished, consuming an enviable portion. She was very quiet in this company, in what seemed to Ista unnecessary awe of her surroundings. Ista thought she would rather have heard Liss’s tales than the local gossip that filled the time. When they had escaped the ladies and returned to the square stone court, Ista told her so, and chided her for her shyness.

  “Truly,” Liss admitted, “I think it’s the dress. I felt a great gawk next to those highborn girls. I don’t know how they manage all this fancy cloth. I’m sure I shall trip over myself and tear something.”

  “Then let us walk about in the colonnade, that I may stretch my scabs as the acolyte instructs, and that you may practice swishing in silks to do me honor in this court. And tell me more of your ride.”

  Liss shortened her steps in a most ladylike fashion, keeping to Ista’s slow limp in the cool of the cloistered walkway. Ista primed her with questions about every aspect of her journey. Not that Ista needed a catalogue of every hair, fault, virtue, and quirk of every horse Liss had ridden for the past several days, but Liss’s voice was such welcome music, it hardly mattered what it dwelt upon. Ista had less to report, she found, of her own ride, certainly not details of the Jokonan horseflesh, which she had mainly experienced as a penance. Nor had she desire to recall green flies gathering to feed on thickening blood.

  Passing a pillar, Liss reached out to trail her fingers over the carved tracery. “It looks like stone brocade. Porifors is a far more beautiful castle than I was expecting. Is Lord Arhys dy Lutez as great a swordmaster as the marchess was bragging?”

  “Yes, in fact. He slew four of the enemy who attempted to ride off with me. Two escaped.” She had not forgotten them. She was almost glad, in retrospect, that the translator officer had been one of those fled. She had spoken with him, eye to eye, a few too many times for her to imagine h
im as a cipher, blurred into the faceless ranks of the fallen. A feminine weakness, that, perhaps, like refusing to eat any animal one had named as a pet.

  “Was it true the march rode in with you upon his saddlebow?”

  “Yes,” said Ista shortly.

  Liss’s eyes crinkled with delight. “How splendid! Too bad he’s so married, eh? Is he really as handsome as his wife seems to think?”

  “I can’t say,” Ista growled. She added in reluctant fairness, “He is, however, quite handsome.”

  “How fine, to have such a lord at your feet, though. I am glad you have come to such a place, after all this.”

  Ista changed He wasn’t exactly at my feet to, “I do not plan to linger here.”

  Liss’s brows rose. “The Mother’s acolyte said you could not ride far yet.”

  “Ought not, perhaps. Not comfortably. I could at need.” Ista followed Liss’s admiring glance around the court, shaded in the slanting light of the late day, and tried to evolve a reason for her unease that did not involve bad dreams. A rational, sensible reason, for a woman who was not mad in the least. She rubbed at the itch on her forehead. “We are too close to Jokona, here. I do not know what treaties of mutual aid presently exist between Jokona and Borasnen, but everyone knows the port of Visping is the prize of my royal daughter’s eye. What is planned to happen in the fall will be no mere border raid. And there was a terrible event here this spring that can’t have helped relations with the prince of Jokona in any way.” Ista did not look toward that corner room.

  “You mean how Porifors’s master of horse was stabbed by that Jokonan courtier? Goram told me of it while we were swabbing down that fat palomino. Odd fellow—I think he’s a little simple in the head—but he knows his trade.” She added, “Here, Royina, you are limping worse than my second horse. Sit, rest.” She chose a shaded bench at the court’s far end, the one where Cattilara’s ladies had collected the previous evening, and with an air of determined heedfulness settled Ista upon it.

  After a moment of silence, she gave Ista a sidelong look. “Funny old man, Goram. He wanted to know if a royina outranked a princess. Because a princess was the daughter of a prince, but you were only the daughter of a provincar. And that Roya Orico’s widow Sara was a dowager royina more recent than you. I said a Chalionese provincar was worth any Roknari prince, and besides, you were the mother of the royina of all Chalion-Ibra herself, and nobody else is that.”

  Ista forced herself to smile. “Royinas do not often come in his way, I expect. Did your answers pacify him?”

  Liss shrugged. “Seemed to.” Her frown deepened. “Isn’t it a strange thing, for a man to lie stunned like that, for months?”

  It was Ista’s turn to shrug. “Palsy-strokes, broken heads, broken necks … drownings … it happens that way, sometimes.”

  “Some recover though, don’t they?”

  “I think those that recover start to do so … sooner. Most struck down that way do not live long thereafter, unless their care is extraordinary. It’s a slow, ugly death for a man. Or anyone. Better to go swiftly, at the first.”

  “If Goram cares for Lord Illvin half as well as he cares for his horses, perhaps that explains it.”

  Ista became conscious that the runty man himself had emerged from the corner chamber and hunkered down behind the balustrade, watching them. After a time he rose, came down the stairs, and crossed the court. As he neared, his steps shortened, his head drew in like a turtle’s, and his hands gripped one another.

  He stopped a little distance off, bent his knees, and ducked his head, first to Ista, then to Liss, then back to Ista again as if to make sure. His eyes were the color of unpolished steel. His stare, from under those bushy brows, was unblinking.

  “Aye,” he said at last, to a point halfway between the two women. “She’s the one he was going on about, no mistake.” He pursed his lips, and his gaze suddenly fixed on Liss. “Did you ask her?”

  Liss smiled crookedly. “Hello, Goram. Well, I was working up to it.”

  He wrapped his arms around himself, rocking forward and back. “Ask her, then.”

  Liss cocked her head. “Why don’t you? She doesn’t bite.”

  “ ’B ’n ’t,” he mumbled obscurely, glowering at his booted feet. “You.”

  Liss shrugged amused bafflement and turned to Ista. “Royina, Goram wishes you to come view his master.”

  Ista sat back and was silent for a long, withheld breath. “Why?” she finally asked.

  Goram peered up at her, then back down at his feet. “You were the one he was going on about.”

  “Surely,” said Ista after another moment, “no man would wish to be seen in his sickbed by strangers.”

  “That’s all right,” Goram pronounced. He blinked, and stared hard at her.

  Liss, her eyes crinkling, cupped her hand and whispered in Ista’s ear, “He was more talkative in the stalls. I think you frighten him.”

  Articulate smooth persuasion, Ista thought she might resist. In this odd tangle, she could hardly find an end. Urgent eyes, tongue of wood, a silent pressure of expectation … She could curse a god. She could not curse a groom.

  She glanced around the court. Neither midnight nor noon, now; no details matched her dreams. Her dream had held neither Goram nor Liss, the time of day was all wrong … maybe it was safe, benign. She drew a breath.

  “So, then, Liss. Let us renew my pilgrimage party and go view another ruin.”

  Liss helped her up, her face alert with open curiosity. Ista climbed the stairs upon her arm, slowly. Goram watched her anxiously, his lips moving, as if mentally boosting her up each step.

  The women followed the groom to the end of the gallery. He opened the door, backed up, bowed again. Ista hesitated, then followed Liss inside.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE ROOM WAS LIGHTER THAN SHE’D SEEN IT IN HER VISION, the shutters on the far wall open now to the blue sky beyond. The effect was airy and gracious. The chamber didn’t smell like a sickroom, no bunches of heavy-scented herbs hanging from the rafters failing to mask an underlying tang of feces, vomit, sweat, or despair. Just cool air, wood wax, and a faint, not unpleasing aroma of masculine occupation. Not unpleasing at all.

  Ista forced her gaze to the bed, and stood rooted.

  The bed was made. He rested atop the counterpane not like a man in a sickbed, but like a man who had lain down for but a moment in the middle of a busy day. Or like a corpse laid out in best garb for his funeral. Long and lean, exactly as in her dreams, but dressed very differently: not patient or sleeper, but courtier. A tan tunic embroidered with twining leaves was fastened up to his neck. Matching trousers were tucked into polished boots buckled up to his calves. A maroon vest-cloak spread beneath and beside him, and a sheathed sword lay upon the neatly arranged folds, its inlaid hilt beneath his slack left hand. A seal ring gleamed on one finger.

  His hair was not merely combed back from his high forehead, but braided in neat cords up from each temple and over his crown. The dark, frosted length of it ended in a queue brought back over his right shoulder to rest upon his chest, the tail of it, beyond the maroon tie, brushed out straight. He was shaved, and that recently. A scent of lavender water tickled Ista’s nostrils.

  She became aware that Goram was watching her with a painful intensity, his hands flexing as they gripped each other.

  All this silent beauty must be his work. What must the man on the bed have been to receive such devotion from this lackey now, when he had so plainly lost all power to punish or reward?

  “Five gods,” gasped Liss. “He’s dead.”

  Goram sniffed. “No, he’s not. He don’t rot.”

  “But he’s not breathing!”

  “Does too. You can tell with the mirror, see.” He sidled around the bed and picked up a tiny hand mirror from a nearby chest. With a glower at the girl from under his bristling eyebrows, he held it beneath Lord Illvin’s nostrils. “See?”

  Liss bent nearer across th
e unmoving form and cast a wary glance downward. “That’s your thumbprint.”

  “Is not!”

  “Well … maybe …” Liss straightened and backed away with a jerky gesture, as if inviting Ista to take her vacated place by the bedside and judge for herself.

  Ista drew nearer under Goram’s anxious eye, trying to find something to say to the grizzled fellow. “You care for him well. A tragedy, that Ser dy Arbanos should have been hewn down like this.”

  “Aye,” he said. He swallowed and added, “So … go on, lady.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “So … kiss him.”

  For just a moment, she pressed her teeth so hard together that her jaw twinged. But there was no suppressed merriment in Goram’s seamed, strained face, no hint of japery. “I don’t follow you.”

  He chewed on his lip. “It was a princess put him here. I thought maybe you could wake him. Being a royina and all.” He added after a doubtful moment, “Dowager royina.”

  He was deathly serious, she saw to her dismay. She said as gently as she could, “Goram, that’s a children’s story. We are not children here, alas.”

  A slight choking noise made her glance aside. Liss’s face was screwed up, but she forbore to laugh, five gods be thanked.

  “You could try. It wouldn’t hurt to try.” He was rocking again in his unease, forward and back.

  “I fear it would do no good, either.”

  “No harm,” he repeated doggedly. “Got to try something.”

  He must have spent several hours in the meticulous preparation of the scene, of his master, for her view. What desperate hope could drive him to such bizarre lengths?