Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Arhys smiled, staring down at his boots. “Good boy. We do not yield Porifors. Hold to that, and you shall serve me still, even when my grave has swallowed all vows.”

  Cattilara burst into tears.

  Ista levered her exhausted body upright from her stool. She felt as though she had been beaten with sticks. “Lord Illvin, your brother must borrow of you for a little longer. Are you ready?”

  “Eh,” he grunted, without enthusiasm. “Do what you must.” He glanced up at her and added with suppressed urgency, “You will come again, yes?”

  “Yes.” She moved her hand, released her ligature.

  Illvin sank back. Arhys rolled to his feet, a picture of strength again. “Ah!”

  He enfolded the weeping Cattilara in his arms and led her out, murmuring comforting endearments.

  Yes, Ista thought bitterly. You caught her—I’ll bet you didn’t even try to dodge—you deal with her … And he would, she felt sure. What less would one expect from a man with soap in his saddlebags … ? Her temples were throbbing.

  “Liss, I’m going to go lie down now. I have a headache.”

  “Oh.” Liss came promptly to her side, offering her arm in support. As a lady-in-waiting she had her limits, but Ista had to allow, she was one of the best courtiers she’d ever encountered. “Would you like me to bathe your forehead in lavender water? I saw a lady do that, once.”

  “Thank you. That would be lovely.”

  She glanced back at Lord Illvin, lying silently, emptied of life and wit again. “Take care of him, Goram.”

  He bobbed a bow, gave her a look of inarticulate frustration, and abruptly dropped to his knees and kissed the hem of her skirt. “Bles’t One,” he mumbled. “Free him. Free us all.”

  Ista swallowed aggravation, produced an unfelt smile for him, extracted her skirt from his grip, and let Liss usher her out.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A PALL WAS CAST OVER PORIFORS THAT EVENING. THE CASTLE’S master and mistress withdrew into private conclave, and all the planned entertainments were abruptly canceled. Ista could only be relieved to be left in her chambers. Toward sunset, Liss reported, a few of Arhys’s key officers were called to him, and exited much later looking very grim. Ista hoped the march had mustered the wit to leave the original story of Umerue’s death intact and devise some other tale to cover his impending—or was that retroactive?—lethal illness. But given that the truth implicated the marchess for the Jokonan princess’s murder, Ista couldn’t picture Cattilara rushing to, nor Arhys permitting, public confession.

  Ista’s dreams were untroubled that night by gods or visions, although made unpleasant enough by murky, erratic nightmares involving either disastrous travel on broken-down or dying horses, or confused wandering through crumbling, architecturally bizarre castles for the repair of which she was somehow responsible. She woke poorly rested, and waited impatiently for noon.

  She sent Liss to help Goram and warn him of her visit, then watched for the meal tray to be brought up. It was handed in at Lord Illvin’s door by the maid; shortly afterward Liss emerged and strolled across the gallery to Ista’s chambers.

  “Goram will signal by opening the door when he’s ready,” Liss reported. She was subdued, still unsettled by yesterday’s evil wonders and increasingly worried for Foix, for all that Ista had assured her that he must be in the hands of the archdivine of Maradi by now. Liss had been more consoled by Ista’s pointing out that Lady Cattilara had hosted a more powerful demon than Foix’s for over two months without visible deterioration. Ista only wished her own heart could share in the reassurance she ladled out.

  At last the carved door on the gallery opposite swung open, and Liss escorted Ista across.

  Illvin was sitting up in bed, dressed in tunic and trousers, hair brushed back and tied at his nape.

  “Royina,” he said, and bowed his head. He looked both wary and shocked. Goram or Liss or both had presumably finally informed him of Ista’s rank and identity, in the little time since he had returned to consciousness. “I’m sorry. I swear I prayed for help, not for you!”

  His speech was slurred again. Ista was reminded that while she’d had a day to digest the developments, Illvin had only been granted an hour. She sighed, went to his bedside, and stole the white fire from the lower half of his body to reinforce the upper. He blinked and gulped.

  “It’s not that—I didn’t mean to insult …” His words trailed off in embarrassed confusion, not slurred now, just mumbled. He attempted to shift his legs, failed, and eyed them with misgiving.

  “I suspect,” she said, “that royina is not the capacity in which I was called here. The gods do not measure rank as we do. A royina and a chambermaid likely look much the same, from their perspective.”

  “You must admit, though, chambermaids are more numerous.”

  She smiled bleakly. “I seem to have a calling. It is not by my choice. The gods appear attracted to me. Like flies to blood.”

  He waved one weakened hand in protest at this metaphor. “I confess, I have never thought of the gods as flies.”

  “Neither have I, really.” She remembered staring into those dark infinities. “But dwelling on their real nature hurts my … reason, I suppose. Saps my nerve.”

  “Perhaps the gods know what they are about. How did you know what I dreamed? I saw you three times, when I waked in my dreaming. Twice, you shone with an uncanny light.”

  “I dreamed those dreams, too.”

  “Even the third one?”

  “Yes.” No dream, that, but she was abashed by that rash kiss. Though after Cattilara’s performance, it had seemed such a small self-indulgence …

  He cleared his throat. “My apologies, Royina.”

  “What for?”

  “Ah …” He glanced at her lips, and away. “Nothing.”

  She tried not to think about the taste of his reviving mouth. Goram dragged the somewhat battered chair to Illvin’s bedside for her, and put out the stool at the bed’s foot for Liss, before retreating to stand at a hunched sort of attention by the far wall. Ista and Illvin were left staring at one another in equal, she was sure, bafflement.

  “Supposing,” he began again, “that you are not here by chance, but by the prayers of, well”—he cleared his throat in embarrassment—“someone—it must be to solve this tangle. Yes?”

  “Say rather, uncover it. Its solution eludes me.”

  “I thought you had agency over Catti’s demon. Will you not banish it?”

  “I don’t know how,” she admitted uneasily. “The Bastard has given me my second sight—given me back, I should say, my second sight, for this is not the first time the gods have troubled me. But the god gave me no instructions, unless they are contained in another man I saw in my dreams.” And vice versa. Upon consideration … was dy Cabon’s appearance, on the heels of the Bastard’s mysterious second kiss, some sort of intimation of just that? “The god sent me a spiritual conductor, Learned dy Cabon, and I dearly desire his counsel in this before I proceed. He has studied something, I believe, about how demons are properly dispatched back to their Master. I’m certain he is meant to be here. But I have lost him on the road, and I fear for his safety.” She hesitated. “I’m not in haste in this matter. I see no merit in releasing Arhys from his body only to doom him to the damnation of a lost ghost.”

  He grew still. “A ghost? Are you sure?”

  “I saw it, when the spell was interrupted here yesterday. Nothing … happened, and it should have. There is a white roaring, when the doors of a soul are opened by death to the gods; it is a huge event. Damnation is but a silence, a slow freezing.” She rubbed her tired eyes. “And more—even if I knew how he might find his way to his god, I am by no means sure that Arhys can convince his wife to release him. Yet if he does not persuade her, who else could? Not me, I fear. And even if she would let him go … the demon she has contracted seems skilled and powerful. If she no longer is sustained by the overmastering will to keep Arhys
seeming-alive, if she collapses into grief—she will be very vulnerable to it.”

  He vented a “Hm” of deepening doubt.

  “Has she much strength of character, in your observation?”

  He frowned. “I would not have said so, before this. Lovely girl, adores Arhys, but I’d swear that if she held up a lighted candle beside one pretty ear, I could blow it out through the other. Arhys doesn’t seem to mind.” He smiled wryly. “Although if such beauty had worshipped me so ardently, my opinion of her wits might well have risen higher upon the swelling of my head, or whatever, too. Yet—she resisted the cloud of Umerue’s sorcery, and I … did not.”

  “I suspect Umerue underestimated her. And that’s another thing,” said Ista. “How could a princess of Jokona, a devout Quadrene, come by a demon in the first place? And keep it concealed, or otherwise evade accusation? They burn sorcerers there, though how the Quadrene divines keep the demon from jumping to another through the flames, I don’t know. They must do something to tie it to its mount before dispatching them both.”

  “Yes, they do. It involves much ceremony and prayer. An ugly business; worse, it doesn’t always work.” He hesitated. “Catti said the sorceress was sent.”

  “By whom? The prince her brother? Assuming she had been dumped back into his household by her last late husband’s heirs.”

  “I believe she was, yes. But … it’s hard to picture Sordso the Sot dabbling in demons for the sake of Jokona.”

  “Sordso the Sot? Is that what the men of Caribastos call the young prince?”

  “That’s what everybody calls him, on both sides of the border. He chose to spend the hiatus between his father’s death and the end of his mother’s regency not in studying statecraft or warfare, but in wine parties and versifying. He’s actually quite a pretty poet, in a self-consciously melancholy sort of vein, judging by the samples I’ve heard. We all hoped he would pursue the calling, which looked to be more rewarding for him than a prince’s trade.” He grinned briefly. “My lord dy Caribastos would be glad to give him a pension and a palace, and take the burdens of government off his narrow shoulders.”

  “It seems the prince is not so inattentive now. It was he who sent the raiding party into Ibra, which fled east from Rauma over the mountains and so encountered me. They had tally officers to account the prince’s fifth. Did Liss tell you of this?”

  “Only in brief.” He nodded to the riding girl, who nodded back in confirmation. He paused, his dark brows drawing down. “Rauma? Strange. Why Rauma?”

  “I guessed that it was to encourage the Fox of Ibra to keep his troops at home, come the fall campaign, instead of sending them in support of his son against Visping.”

  “Mm, could be. Rauma just seems very deep in Ibran territory to strike at so. Bad lines of retreat, as the raiders apparently found.”

  “Lord Arhys mentioned that by his reckoning, of the three hundred men who left Jokona, only three returned.”

  Illvin whistled. “Good for Arhys. Costly diversion for Sordso!”

  “Except that they came very close to paying for all by carrying me off with them. But that could not have been part of their original plan. They didn’t even carry maps of Chalion.”

  “I know the march of Rauma of old. I can imagine he would give the Jokonans a hot welcome. He used to be one of our better enemies, till we all became in-laws with Ibra. Your daughter’s marriage took a great deal of pressure off Porifors’s western flank, for which I do thank her, Royina.”

  “Royse Bergon is a dear boy.” Not that Ista could help approving of anyone so plainly smitten with her daughter as Iselle’s young Ibran husband.

  “His father the roya is a bit of a cactus, though. Dry, spiny, will make your fingers bleed.”

  “Well, he’s our cactus now.”

  “Indeed.”

  Ista sat back with a troubled sigh. “The news of this—at least, the news that a highborn lady of Jokona’s court harbored a demon and attempted to suborn a Chalionese fortress by sorcery—should not be suppressed. I should write a warning to Archdivine Mendenal at Cardegoss, and to Chancellor dy Cazaril, at least.”

  “That would be well,” he conceded reluctantly, “for all that I am gravely embarrassed by how closely Umerue came to succeeding. And yet—it wasn’t the archdivine of Cardegoss who was dragged by chance and his hair here to the hind end of Chalion. It was you. A more unlikely answer to my prayers I can scarcely imagine.” His mouth twisted up in puzzlement as he squinted at her.

  “Did you pray to the Bastard, in your coherent moments?”

  “Say, waking, rather than coherent. It all seems a fog till—yesterday? Yesterday just now. Yes, I prayed desperately. It was the only course left to me by then. I couldn’t even form the right words aloud. Just howling in my heart. To my god, whom I had abandoned—I haven’t been much for prayer since I became a man. If He’d said, Boot off, boy, you wanted to be on your own, now eat what you cooked, I should have thought Him within His rights.” He added more slowly, “Why you? Unless this tangle has some older roots still, with my brother’s father and Cardegoss court politics.”

  His shrewd guess discomfited her. “I have an old, dry knot of guilt still left to be undone with the late Lord dy Lutez, yes, but it has nothing to do with Arhys. And no, Arvol was not my lover!”

  Illvin looked taken aback at her vehemence. “I did not say so, lady!”

  She let out her breath. “No, you didn’t. It’s Lady Cattilara who thinks the old slander is a romantic tale, five gods spare me. Arhys just wants to take me for some spiritual stepmother, I think.”

  He surprised her by snorting. “He would.” His fondly exasperated headshake scarcely enlightened her as to how to interpret this cryptic remark.

  She said a little tartly, “Until I heard you two speaking with each other, I had half decided you were the jealous murderer. The despised bastard brother, denied father, title, property, pushed over the edge by this last loss.”

  His dry half laugh did not sound in the least offended. “I have encountered that delusion once or twice before. The truth is exactly the reverse. I had a father all my life, or at any rate, all of his. Arhys had—a dream. My father undertook the raising of us both, in all practical matters, and he tried to do well by Arhys, but it was always with that little extra mindful effort. To me, his love flowed without hindrance.

  “But Arhys was never jealous or resentful because, you see, someday it would all be made right. Someday, his fine father would call him to court. When he was big enough. When he was good enough, a good enough swordsman, horseman, officer. The great Lord dy Lutez would place him at his right hand, present him to his glittering retinue, and say to all his powerful friends, See, this is my son, is he not well? Arhys would never wear his best things; he kept them packed for the journey. For when the call came. He was ready to leave on an hour’s notice. Then Lord dy Lutez died, and … the dream stayed a dream.”

  Ista shook her head in sorrow. “In all the five years I knew him, Arvol dy Lutez scarcely mentioned Arhys. He never spoke of you. If he had not died in the dungeons of the Zangre that night … that summons still might never have come, I think.”

  “I wondered, in retrospect. I pray you, don’t tell Arhys that.”

  “I am not sure yet what I must tell him.” Although I have my fears. Whatever it was, it was clear she had best not put it off too long.

  “Me, I had a live man for a father,” Illvin went on. “Cranky betimes—how we fought when I was younger! I am so glad he lived long enough for us to be grown men together. We cared for him here at Porifors after his palsy-stroke—albeit not too long. I think he wished to be gone to look for our mother by then, for a few times we found him out searching for her.” His rich voice tightened. “Twenty years dead, she was. His life was so lightly held at the last, his death in the Father’s season seemed no sorrow. I held his hand at the end. It felt very cool and dry, almost transparent. Five gods, how did I get on to this subject? You will hav
e me leaking, next.” He was leaking now, she thought, but he steadfastly ignored the suspect sheen in his eyes, and, politely, she did, too. “Thus, my experience of bastardy.” He hesitated, eyed her. “Do you—you, who say you have seen them face-to-face—believe the gods bring us back to those we loved? When our spirits rise?”

  “I do not know,” she said, surprised into honesty. Was he thinking forward, to Arhys, as well as back to the elder Ser dy Arbanos, in this moment? “Perhaps I’ve never loved anyone enough to know. I think … it is not a fool’s hope.”

  “Hm.”

  She looked away from his face, feeling an intruder upon that wistful inward frown. Her eye fell on Goram, rocking and clenching his hands again. Outwardly, a grizzled aging menial. Inwardly … stripped, plundered, burned-out like some village ravaged by retreating troops.

  “How came you by Goram?” Ista asked Illvin. “And where?”

  “I was reconnoitering in Jokona, as is my habit whenever I have a spare week. I collect castle and town plans, for a pastime.” The brief smile that flitted across his mouth implied that he collected rather more than this, but he went on. “Having ridden down to Hamavik in the guise of a horse dealer, and having accumulated rather more stock than I’d intended, I found myself in need of an extra groom. As a Roknari merchant, I buy out Chalionese prisoners whenever I have a chance. The men with no family have little hope of ransom. Goram less than most, as he’d plainly lost most of his wits and memory. I’d diagnose a knock to the head in his last battle, though there’s no scar, so it might have been some other ill treatment, or fever. Or both. It was clear no one else in the market wanted him that day, so I drove a better bargain than I’d expected. As it proved.” The smile flickered again. “When we reached Porifors, and I freed him, he asked to stay in my service, as he no longer was sure where his home lay.”