Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Yes, yes,” Arhys murmured to his wife. His hand, on her head, gave it a soft little shake from side to side. “I command all here at Porifors; all its lives are in my hands. I have to know all. Yes.”

  “Good, Arhys,” muttered Illvin. “Stand up to her, for once.”

  Ista pressed her hand to her mouth, for Arhys was speaking. Yes, better that this should come from him. She will not resist him, or at least, not as much.

  “What happened after you stabbed the … sorceress?” Arhys asked. “How did you capture her demon?”

  Catti sniffled, swallowed, choked, and coughed. In a rough voice she answered, “It just came to me. I didn’t do anything. It was either me or Illvin, and it was more afraid of Illvin.” A grim little smile fleeted across her face. “It promised me anything if I would flee away. But there was only one thing I wanted. I wanted you back. I made it put you back. It still wants to escape, but I’ll never let it, never.”

  Will against will. The demon, Ista suspected, was experienced, strong with the consumption of more than one life. But on certain narrow issues, Cattilara was more willful. More than willful: obsessed. If the demon had mistaken Catti for a more tractable mount than Illvin, it had been in for an interesting surprise. For all her exasperation with Catti, Ista felt a certain dark satisfaction at the thought of the demon’s dismay.

  “You do realize,” Ista said, “that the demon is stealing life from Illvin to keep Arhys … moving?”

  Catti’s head jerked up. “It’s only fair. He stabbed Arhys; let him pay!”

  “Hold hard!” said Illvin. “It wasn’t just me in that botch-up.”

  “If you hadn’t grabbed my hand, it wouldn’t have happened!”

  “No, nor if Arhys hadn’t tripped, or if Umerue had dodged the other way, or, or any of a hundred other things. But we all did. And it did.” His mouth set in a flat line.

  “Yes,” said Ista slowly. “Four persons combined to effect an outcome desired, I daresay, by none. I am not so sure about the … fifth party present.”

  “It’s true,” said Illvin, “that demons thrive on misfortune and disorder; it is their nature, and the magic they lend partakes of that nature. Or so the divines always taught me.” He turned against his pillows and studied his sister-in-law uneasily.

  “Well, this demon was sent here,” said Cattilara. “On purpose. It was supposed to seduce Illvin, or Arhys, or both, and take Castle Porifors from within for the prince of Jokona. I stopped that from happening. As much as any soldier pushing back a scaling ladder in a siege.” She tossed her hair and glowered, as if daring anyone to criticize this achievement.

  Illvin’s lips pursed in a look of sudden enlightenment. Arhys’s brows drew down in dismay.

  “And Lord Pechma?” prompted Ista.

  “Oh, Pechma was easy. The demon knew all about him.” Cattilara sniffed disdain. “All I had to do, after I’d arranged Illvin and walked Arhys back to our bed, was find Pechma and accuse him, and convince him he would be hanged out of hand in the morning if he didn’t run away. He did the rest himself. He’s probably still running.”

  The young woman had spent a busy night, Ista reflected. The artistic malice of Illvin’s naked arrangement took her aback. A little revenge, perhaps, upon a man who’d remained steadfastly undazzled by his brother’s choice of bride?

  “So none of this is Arhys’s fault,” Catti continued passionately. “Why should he be the only one to suffer?” She turned her angry face to Ista. “So, you—whatever you have done to bind him to this chair—you let him up!”

  Ista touched her lips. “Very many people suffer, who are not at fault,” she said. “It’s not a new condition in the world. I will—as you say, release—Arhys in a while, but all must speak freely first. The Temple tells us that demons work their wonders at a terrible cost. Just how long do you imagine you can keep this one going?”

  Cattilara’s jaw set. “I don’t know. As long as I breathe and have will! Because if the demon magic stops, Arhys dies.”

  “If … that is indeed the alternative,” Illvin put in suddenly, “perhaps this turn and turnabout is no bad thing. I can stand to share … half, say. Suppose half of each day should be Arhys’s, and half mine?”

  And then he need not be a fratricide? Or even one-quarter of a fratricide? The rising hope was writ plain in his face. Cattilara brightened at the unexpected offer of alliance, and she looked up at Illvin with new speculation.

  Ista hesitated, shaken in her certainties. Uncertainties, her bleak thought corrected. “I think,” she said, “this cannot work, or cannot work for very long. However starved it is, the demon must be slowly consuming Catti, or it should have faded by now, or been unable to maintain its spell. Learned dy Cabon told me that the demon always turns the tables on its mount, given enough time.”

  “So Arhys is saved, I will take the risk!” said Cattilara.

  Arhys drew a sharp breath of protest and shook his head.

  “Seems almost worthwhile to me,” muttered Illvin darkly.

  “But it’s not a risk. It’s a certainty. And Arhys dies the same, and Cattilara is destroyed.”

  “But when, how long, that’s the question!” Cattilara argued. “All sorts of other things could happen before … then.”

  “Yes, and I can tell you some of them,” said Ista. “Illvin, I am sure, studied the theology of death magic in the Bastard’s seminary. I had a closer acquaintance with it, once. Arhys isn’t alive now. The demon captured his severed spirit and returned it to haunt his own body. A familiar, congenial abode, I suspect, in some ways. But he is cut off from the support of his god, and his spirit is equally torn from the nourishment of matter. He cannot maintain life, except by what is plundered from Illvin, nor increase it, nor engender it.”

  Cattilara flinched, hunching her shoulders in protest.

  Ista felt her way further into the dark consequences. “So his fate must be the fate of the lost spirits. Slowly to fade, to blur, to grow unmindful of himself, the world, his memories—his loves and hates—to forget. It is a sort of senility. I have seen the blind ghosts drifting. It is a quiet damnation, and merciful—for them. Less merciful for a man still in his body, I think.”

  “You mean he’ll lose his wits?” said Illvin, aghast.

  “That’s … not so good,” said Arhys. “I have not so many to spare as you.” He attempted to smile at his brother. The attempt failed miserably.

  Ista bit her lip and forged on. “I have a guess why the demon gives Illvin so little time, barely enough—no, not even enough—to eat. Why their shares are so very uneven. I think, when Illvin is awake, the demon … loses ground, maintaining Arhys’s body. For every hour of waking life given to Illvin, the dead body decays a little more. In time, the rot shall start to be evident to the senses of others.” It was evident to her heightened sensitivity already, now that she knew how to look. I do not love my new education. “Is that the fate you desire for your handsome husband, Lady Cattilara? A senile mind trapped in a decomposing body?”

  Cattilara’s lips moved, No, no, but she did not speak. She hid her face against Arhys’s knees.

  Gods, why did you give this vile task to me? Ista spoke on, relentlessly. “Illvin is dying too, being slowly drained of more life than he can replace. But if Illvin dies, Arhys will … stop, as well. Both their mother’s sons lost together. Not her wish, I can assure you. Which end will come first in this evil race, I cannot guess. But that is the ultimate arithmetic of demon magic: two lives traded for one, then that one subtracted. Leaving, for all your pains, nothing. Do I have my tally theologically correct, Lord Illvin?”

  “Yes,” he whispered. He swallowed and found his voice. “Demon magic—the divines say—invariably engenders more chaos than it ever produces order. The cost is always higher than the prize. Some who dabble in demons try to spread the cost to others and keep the prize for themselves. It seldom works for long. Although it is said that some very wise and subtle theologians, Te
mple sorcerers, can use the demon magic according to its nature, and not against it, and yet effect good. I never quite understood that part.”

  Ista was very unsure about her next move, but it seemed the logical progression. She had a profound mistrust of logic; it was quite as possible to reason one’s way, step by slow step, into a mire of deep sin as it was to fall into it headlong. “I have now heard depositions from all concerned here except one. I think this demon has acquired the gift of speech. One wonders from whom, if it can make … bilingual puns, but anyway. I would speak with it. Lady Cattilara, can you let it come up for a time?”

  “No!” She frowned at Ista’s look, and added, “It’s not me that’s the problem. It tries to get away. It will try to run off with my body, if it can.”

  “Hm,” said Ista. She didn’t greatly trust Cattilara, but this assertion could well be true.

  “Tie her to the chair,” Liss suggested laconically from her place by the wall. Ista looked over her shoulder at the girl; Liss raised her eyebrows and shrugged. She kept a detached posture, but her eyes were wide and fascinated, as if she were watching a play and wanted to hear the next act.

  “You don’t understand,” said Cattilara. “It won’t want to go back in, afterward.”

  “I will undertake to hold it,” said Ista.

  Illvin frowned curiously at her. “How?”

  “I don’t think you can,” said Cattilara.

  “It does. Or it would not fear me so, I think.”

  “Oh.” Cattilara’s face screwed up in thought.

  “I think,” said Arhys slowly, “this prisoner’s interrogation could be a most important one. It touches on the defense of Porifors. Will you dare it, dear Catti—for me?”

  She sniffed, frowned, set her teeth.

  “I know you have the courage,” he added, watching her.

  “Oh—very well!” She made a face and climbed to her feet. “But I don’t think this is going to work.”

  The young marchess watched with dismay as Goram, with Liss’s assistance, dragged the half-paralyzed Arhys out of the chair to sit on the floor propped up against the side of the bed. Cattilara cooperated, though, plopping down in his vacated spot and laying her hands out on the wooden arms. Goram hastened to produce makeshift ties from Illvin’s stock of belts and sashes.

  “Use the cloths,” Arhys advised anxiously. “So they will not cut into her skin.”

  Ista glanced at the scabs circling her own wrists like bracelets.

  “Tie my ankles, too,” Cattilara insisted. “Tighter.”

  Goram was overcautious, under the march’s worried eye, but Liss finally achieved knots that Cattilara approved. The ties seemed more bundles than bindings by the time Liss finished.

  Ista moved her stool over to face Cattilara, very conscious of Arhys’s strong, limp body laid out by her skirts. “Go ahead, then, Lady Cattilara. Release the demon, let it up.”

  Cattilara’s eyes closed. Ista half closed hers, trying to see those inner boundaries with her inner eye. It was not so much a case of letting, it seemed, as driving. “Come out, you,” Cattilara muttered, sounding like a boy poking a badger out of its hole with a stick. “Up!”

  A surge of invisible violet light—Ista summoned all her sensitivity. On the surface, Cattilara’s expression changed, the stiff anxiety giving way, briefly, to a languid smile; her tongue ran over her lips, lasciviously. She grimaced, as if stretching the muscles of her face in unaccustomed directions. The violet tinge flowed throughout her body, to the fingertips. Her breath drew in.

  Her eyes snapped open, widening in terror at the sight of Ista. “Spare us, Shining One!” she shrieked. Everyone in the room flinched at the sharp cry.

  She began to rock and yank at her bindings. “Let us up, untie us! We command you! Let us go, let us go!”

  She stopped, and hung panting, then a sly look flashed in her face. She sank back, closed her eyes, opened them again, returning to that stiff, blinking anxiety. “As you see, it’s useless. The stupid thing won’t come out, even for me. Let me up.”

  The violet tint, Ista noted, still filled Cattilara’s body from edge to edge. She waved back Liss, who had started forward with a disappointed look on her face. “No, the creature lies. It’s still right there.”

  “Oh.” Liss returned to the wall.

  Cattilara’s face changed again, dissolving into rage. “Let us go! You blockheads, you have no idea what you have brought down on Porifors!” She bucked and jerked with terrifying strength, rocking the chair. “Flee, flee! We must flee! All flee! Go while you can. She is coming. She is coming. Let us go, let us go—” Cattilara’s voice rose and broke in a wordless scream. The chair began to topple: Goram caught it and held it as it thumped and scraped.

  The frenzied struggles did not diminish, though Cattilara grew scarlet with the effort, and her breath pumped in frightening rasps. Was the demon desperate enough to seek its escape through Cattilara’s death, if it could arrange it? Yes, Ista decided. She could well picture it breaking its mount’s neck by running madly against a wall, or flinging her headfirst over a balcony. Threatening pain to Cattilara’s body was obviously useless, even if Arhys would … well, he’d have no choice but to sit still for it. But it was clearly a futile tactic.

  “Very well.” Ista sighed. “Come back up, Lady Cattilara.”

  The violet tide seemed to slosh back and forth within the confines of Cattilara’s spasming body. The tint receded, but then flooded back. Cattilara unable to regain control? Ista hadn’t expected this. Oh, no. And I promised her I would hold it …

  “Stay,” said Ista. “I was sent by the god to cut this knot. Release Arhys, and I will release you.” Would it believe her? More important, would the threat jolt Catti into ascendancy again?

  The demon-Catti froze in its fight, staring through wide eyes. The soul-stuff in the conduit gushed back toward Illvin. Abruptly, the horrified expression drained from Arhys’s face, to be replaced with—nothing at all. A slack, pale stillness. He toppled over on his side like a rag doll falling. Like a corpse collapsing. Porifors’s brilliant champion turned to a carcass, a mass of dubious meat it would take two men to drag away.

  But his spirit was not uprooted in the white fire Ista had seen in the dying before. His ghost merely drifted apart, shifting from the locus of his body but scarcely otherwise changed. A shock of horror raced through Ista. Five gods. He is sundered already. His god cannot reach him. What have I done?

  “Mmmmmm PUT HIM BACK!” Cattilara raged up to full control of her body like an unleashed mastiff taking down a bull by its nose. The violet light snapped closed into a tight, defensive ball, the channels reappeared, the fire flowed again. Arhys’s breath drew in with a jerk; he blinked and opened his jaw to stretch his face, and pushed himself back into a sitting position, looking half stunned.

  Ista sat shaken. The ploy had worked on Cattilara as her impulse had guessed, but had revealed … something she scarcely understood. No more ploys. I have not the stomach for them.

  Cattilara hung wheezing in her bindings, staring malignantly at Ista. “You. You horrid old bitch. You tricked me.”

  “I tricked the demon, too. Are you sorry?” She signed to Goram and Liss, and they began cautiously unwinding the marchess’s restraints.

  Illvin, who had been peeking worriedly over the side of his bed at his brother, leaned back again and stared in disquiet at Ista. “How are you doing this, lady? Are you perchance a sorceress, too? Are we to trade one demon enemy for a stronger one?”

  “No,” said Ista. “My unwelcome gifts stem from another source. Ask Catti’s … pet. It knows.” Better than I do, I suspect. If possession of or by a demon made one a sorcerer, and the hosting of a god made one a saint, what ambiguous hybrid did one become in the hands of the demon-god?

  “God-touched, then—you claim?” he asked. Neither believing nor disbelieving yet, but watchful.

  “To my everlasting sorrow.”

  “How came this abou
t?”

  “Some suffering bastard prayed to a god too busy to attend to him, and He delegated the task to me. Or so He feigned.”

  Illvin sank down in his sheets. “Oh,” he said very quietly, as her meaning sank in. After a moment, he added, “I would speak more with you on this. In some, um, less busy hour.”

  “I’ll see what I may do.”

  Arhys moved his nearly nerveless hand to caress his wife’s ankle. “Catti. This can’t go on.”

  “But love, what shall we do?” She rocked her head to favor Ista with a heartbroken glare. “You cannot take him now. It’s too soon. I will not give him up now.” She rubbed at the red marks on her arms as her ties fell away.

  “He’s already had more time than is given to many men,” Ista chided her. “He accepted the risks of his soldier’s calling long ago; when you bound yourself to him in marriage, you accepted them, too.”

  But what of his sundering? Death of the body was grief enough. The slow decay of the ghosts, souls who had refused the gods, was a self-destruction. But Arhys had not chosen this exile; it had been imposed upon him. Not his soul’s suicide, but its murder …

  Ista temporized. “But no, it need not be today, in hasty disarray. There is a little time yet. Enough to put his affairs in order while he can still command his wits, if he does not tarry, enough to write or speak his farewells. Not much more than that, I think.” She considered Illvin’s dangerously emaciated fragility. This tangle is far worse than I first guessed. And even second sight does not yet see a way out.

  Arhys shoved himself upright. “You speak sense, madam. I should call the temple’s notary to me—review my will—”

  “It’s not fair!” Cattilara lashed out again. “Illvin slew you, and now he’ll gain all your possessions!”

  Illvin’s head jerked back. “I am not destitute. I do not desire the dy Lutez properties. To avoid that taint, I would gladly give up any expectations. Will them to my niece, or to the Temple—or to her, even.” A twist of his lips indicated his brother’s wife. He hesitated. “Except for Porifors.”