Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  By the wall, Goram nodded endorsement to the tale.

  Ista drew breath. “Are you aware that he is demon-gnawed?”

  Illvin jolted upright. “No!”

  Goram looked equally dumfounded. Liss’s head jerked around, and she stared at the groom in wonder.

  Illvin’s eyes narrowed in rapid thought. “How do you know this, Royina?”

  “I can see it. I can see his soul-stuff. It’s all in rags and tatters.”

  Illvin blinked, sank back. After a moment he said, more cautiously, “Can you see mine?”

  “Yes. To me, it appears as an attenuated white fire, streaming out of your heart to your brother. His soul is gray as a ghost’s, beginning to decompose and blur. It is in his body, but it is not attached to his body. It just … floats there. Liss’s is bright and colorful, but very centered, very solid and tight within the matter that generates it.”

  Liss, evidently deciding she had been complimented, smiled cheerfully.

  After a reflective silence Illvin said, “That must be very distracting for you.”

  “Yes,” she said shortly.

  He cleared his throat. “Are you saying, then, that Goram was a sorcerer?”

  Goram shook his head in horrified denial. “I’m not ever so, lady!”

  “What can you remember, Goram?” Ista asked.

  His seamed face worked. “I know I marched with Orico’s army. I remember the roya’s tents, all red-and-gold silk, shining in the light. I remember … marching as a prisoner, with chains on. Working, some field work, hot in the sun.”

  “Who were your Roknari masters?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t remember them, much.”

  “Ships? Were you ever on ships?”

  “Don’t think so. Horses, yes. There were horses.”

  Illvin put in, “We’ve talked before about what he could remember, when I was trying to find out his family. Because he must have been a prisoner for several years, if it was from the time the prince of Borasnen first attempted the fortress of Gotorget, two years before it fell. I think from some things Goram has said that must have been the campaign he was in. But he doesn’t remember his captivity either, much. That was why I thought his brains might have been baked by a fever, perhaps just before he came my way.”

  “Goram, can you remember what has happened to you since Lord Illvin ransomed you?” asked Ista.

  “Oh, aye. That don’t hurt.”

  “Can you remember anything at all from just before Lord Illvin bought you out?”

  Goram shook his head. “There was a dark place. I liked it because it was cool. Stank, though.”

  “Wits and memories eaten out, the demon jumped, and yet—not dead,” mused Ista. “Abandoning a live mount is not easy for a demon, I gather from dy Cabon; they get all tangled together somehow. Killing the person forces the demon out. Like Umerue. Or like the Quadrene burnings.”

  “Don’t burn me!” cried Goram. He shrank down smaller, almost crouching, and stared in dismay at his own chest

  “No one will burn you,” Illvin said firmly. “Not in Chalion, in any case, and now there is no need, because she says the demon is gone. All gone. Right?” He shot Ista a compelling glare.

  “Very gone.” And most of Goram with it, it seemed. She wondered if he had been a servant, before—or something more.

  “Hamavik …” murmured Illvin. “How suggestive. Both Goram and Princess Umerue were there at the same time. Could this … damage of Goram’s have any relation to Umerue’s demon?”

  It made an enticing sort of connection. And yet … “Catti’s demon didn’t feel as if it had been dining on soldiers. It felt … I’m not sure how to put this. Too womanly. I suppose we can try to get information out of it again. I don’t think the way it carried on here yesterday was any more usual for a demon than for a person. Or sorcerers would be far more conspicuous.”

  Liss, Ista noted, was looking most disturbed. Was she seeing a future Foix in Goram’s slack, timid, bewildered face? Where was the boy? Ista wasn’t desperate enough to pray yet, considering her feelings about prayer, but she thought she might become so if this hideous uncertainty went on much longer.

  Ista continued, “Learned dy Cabon told me that demons were very rare, usually—but not these past few years. That the Temple had not seen an outbreak like this since Roya Fonsa’s day, fifty years gone. I cannot imagine what rip in the Bastard’s hell can be leaking them back into the world in such numbers, but that’s what I am beginning to picture.”

  “Fonsa’s day.” Illvin’s words were starting to slur. “Strange.”

  “Your time is almost up,” Ista said, eyeing the thickening white rope with disfavor. “I can portion you some more.”

  “You said Arhys would start to rot, though,” Illvin objected muzzily. “High summer. Can’t have … bits of him falling off into his soup, can we now … ?” His voice was fading. He roused himself in a spasm of despair. “No! There must be another way! Have to find another way! Lady—come again … ?”

  “Yes,” she said. On the reassurance, he released his grip on the edge of his counterpane and slid down. His face emptied once more into waxen stillness.

  ISTA KEPT TO HER CHAMBERS AGAIN THAT DAY, WAITING IMPATIENTLY for the sun to run its course and rise again. She penned her new letters to Cardegoss and, when the sun dropped, paced the stone courtyard until even Liss abandoned her side and sat on a bench to watch her circulate. By the following midmorning she was reduced to mentally composing another sharp letter to the provincar of Tolnoxo, though the first could barely have arrived yet, let alone been acted upon.

  Rapid footsteps sounded on the stairs outside; Ista looked up from nibbling on her quill feather to see Liss’s braid flash past beyond the grille. She thumped through to Ista’s chamber and stuck her head in the door.

  “Royina,” she said breathlessly. “Something is happening. Lord Arhys has ridden out with a party of armed men—I’m going to the north tower to try to see what I can.”

  Ista rose so hastily she nearly knocked over her chair. “I’ll go with you.”

  They climbed the winding stone staircase to this vantage behind a hastening crossbowman in Porifors’s gray-and-gold tabard. All three went to the northeast edge and peered over the crenellations.

  On this side of the castle, opposite the drop to the river, the land rolled away more level with the ridge. A road, pale with dry dust, wound east through the arid, sunny countryside.

  “That’s the road from Oby,” panted Liss.

  A pair of horsemen were galloping down it, details blurred by the distance. But even from here, Ista could see that one rider was thick, and the other much thicker. The thicker one wore some brown garment over flashes of white. The stiff gait of a horse attempting to canter under Learned dy Cabon’s jouncing weight was distinctive, at least to Ista’s experienced eye.

  A little way beyond them galloped a dozen other men. An escort … ? No. Green tabards of Jokona, here, under the frowning brow of Porifors itself? Ista gasped. The pursuing soldiers were closing on the lead pair.

  With a scuff of slippers and a flutter of silks, Lady Cattilara emerged onto the tower top and ran to look over. She stood on tiptoe and leaned, her pale bosom heaving. “Arhys … five gods, oh, the Father of Winter protect you …”

  Ista followed her gaze. Below Porifors, Arhys on his dappled gray led a troop of mounted men headlong up the road. The lesser horses were hard pressed to keep up with the gray’s reaching strides, and Liss muttered approval of its ground-eating action.

  Cattilara’s lips parted on her panting, and her eyes grew wide and anxious. She vented a little moan.

  “What,” murmured Ista to her. “You can’t be afraid of his being killed, after all.”

  Cattilara shot her a sulky look, hunched one shoulder, and returned her stare to the road.

  Dy Cabon’s overburdened horse was laboring, falling behind. The other horseman—yes, it was certainly Foix dy Gura—p
ulled up his own mount and motioned the divine onward. Foix’s horse capered on the road, fighting his reins. Foix held the beast short with his left hand, grasped his sword hilt, and rose in his stirrups to glare at his pursuers.

  No, Foix! Ista thought helplessly. Foix was a strong swordsman, but unsubtle, without Lord Arhys’s brilliant speed; he might do for one or two of his enemies, maybe three, who would not rise again, but then the rest would overwhelm him. He had not yet seen the rescue riders approaching, out of his sight in a long hollow. He would throw himself away to save the divine, without need …

  His right hand rose again from his hilt, fingers clenching and stretching. His arm went out, tensely. A faint violet light seemed to flicker from his palm, and Cattilara’s breath drew in sharply in astonishment. Liss did not react; was oblivious to this light, Ista realized.

  The first horse in the approaching pack stumbled and fell headlong, spilling its rider. Two others fell atop it before they could pull up. Several horses reared, or shied and tried to bolt to the sides. Foix jerked his mount around and began galloping after dy Cabon.

  So. Foix still has his pet bear. And it seems he’s taught it to dance. Ista’s lips pursed in worry at the implications.

  But other worries were more immediate. Past the rise and dip in the road, dy Cabon met Arhys. The divine’s lathered brown horse staggered to a halt and stood spread-legged; the dappled gray reared beside it. Gesticulations, pointings. Arhys flung his hand in the air, and his troop reined up around him. More hand-waving, and quietly called orders blurred by the breeze to unintelligibility at Ista’s apprehensive height and distance. Swords were drawn, bows cocked, lances leveled, and the troop spread out and began to move up behind the brow of the road.

  Dy Cabon’s failing horse stumbled on at a walk toward Porifors, but he twisted his bulk in the saddle to watch over his shoulder as Foix crested the hill. Foix recoiled briefly at the sight of the armed troop, but an open handed wave from Arhys, and a wilder arm-circling from dy Cabon, beyond, apparently reassured him. He lashed his horse onward, spoke briefly with Arhys, turned, and drew his sword.

  A breathless pause. Ista could hear her blood thudding in her ears, and, foolishly, some bird warbling in the brush, a bright, liquid, indifferent trill, just as if this were some morning of peace and ease. Arhys raised his sword high and swung it down sharply in signal, and his troop thundered forward.

  The men from Porifors crested the rise and fell upon the Jokonan troop too fast for the leaders to turn and retreat. The horsemen in both vans were instantly engaged. The Jokonans at the rear yanked their horses around as hard as they could and spurred away, but not faster than at least a couple of crossbow bolts. A rider in a green tabard toppled and fell from his saddle. The range from here was too great for the bowman sharing Ista’s vantage on the tower to waste his quarrels in the fray, and he swore in frustration at his impotence, then glanced at the royina and mumbled an apology. Ista waved him full royal dispensation, gripped the hot, gritty stone, and leaned squinting into the light.

  Arhys’s sword danced in the sun, a glittering blur. His dappled gray was crowded up in the middle of a pack of kicking, squealing horses. A Jokonan soldier who had managed to get his lance unshipped whipped it up over his own mount’s head and jammed it awkwardly, backhanded, across the haunches of the mount of the man who presently engaged Arhys’s sword. Arhys jerked away. Cattilara screamed as the lance wrenched back again, spattering blood.

  “My lord is struck!” cried the bowman, leaning out as tensely as the women. “Oh—no. His sword arm rises. Five gods be thanked.”

  The horsemen disengaged, the Jokonan swordsman reeling in his saddle. The spearman saw an opening and galloped through to pursue his retreating comrades, bending low over his mount’s neck; a crossbow bolt whizzed over his head to encourage him on his way.

  Curse it, that spearpoint had found a mark in Arhys’s shoulder; Ista had seen the shock of the contact shove the Jokonan’s hand back, almost ripping the shaft from his grip. Yet Arhys’s sword swung unhindered … Her breath drew in sharply, and she whirled away and started for the stairs.

  “Liss, attend me!”

  “But Royina, don’t you want to see how it comes out?”

  “Attend me.”

  Not waiting to see if the girl followed, Ista yanked up her lilac skirts and shuffled down the tight, dark stone curve of the tower stairs. She almost fell in her haste, then hugged the outer wall and the wider tread, but did not slow.

  Out the door, across another courtyard, under the archway, into the stone court. Up the stairs. Her feet thumped across the gallery. She tugged open Illvin’s carved door.

  Goram was crouched by Lord Illvin’s right side, groaning in fear. Illvin’s linen tunic was yanked open and half-down. The groom glanced over his shoulder at her entry and cried, “Lady, help!”

  His hands, she saw as she neared, were pressed to Illvin’s shoulder, and gory with blood. The tunic sleeve was soaked in scarlet. Ista tore around the room until she found a cloth that might be folded into a pad, bundled it clean side outward, and offered it; Goram snatched his hands away just long enough to grab it and stuff it against the jagged wound in Illvin’s shoulder.

  “I didn’t! I didn’t!” cried Goram to her, his eye rolling white-rimmed. “It just happened.”

  “Yes, Goram, I know. It’s all right,” Ista soothed him. “You’re doing well.” Almost, she was tempted to squeeze the rope of white fire shut again, returning the ugly gash to its rightful owner. But now was clearly not a good moment to drop Arhys senseless from his saddle. Illvin’s closed gray eyelids did not move or flutter or pinch in pain, at least. In his unfeeling state he might be freely tended, washed with brine, jabbed with sewing needles. So, Ista wondered dizzily, if the demon permitted him to wake this noon, would the needle punctures still be there when the wound they held closed fled back to his brother?

  The door swung open; Liss at last.

  “Liss. Run at once and find some woman used to tending wounds—the Mother’s craft must have much practice here—have her bring her soap and salves and needles, and a servant to carry water as well.”

  “What? Why?” She trod closer in curiosity.

  “Lord Illvin is badly cut.”

  At this point, Liss saw the blood, and she gasped. “Yes, Royina. But—how could … ?”

  “You saw the spear thrust.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes grew very wide indeed, and she turned and ran.

  Goram peeked quickly under the pad and clapped it tight again. Ista hung over his shoulder. The puncture was not so deep as she had feared; already the sluggish flow of blood was diminishing. “Good, Goram. Keep pressing.”

  “Aye, lady.”

  Ista waited, shifting from foot to foot, until voices sounded again from the gallery outside. Liss opened the door for a woman in an apron bearing a basket, and ushered her in; a male servant followed.

  “Lord Illvin …” Ista began, and glanced at Goram, “fell out of bed and struck his shoulder.” On what? Ista’s invention failed her. She passed rapidly on. “Tend to him and bind him. Help Goram clean up. Speak of this to no one but me, Lord Arhys, or Lady Cattilara.”

  Those of the rescue party from Porifors who hadn’t chased after the Jokonans might be escorting their new guests through the gates just about now, Ista guessed. She strode for the door. “Liss, attend me.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ISTA HURRIED UNDER THE ARCHWAY INTO THE ENTRY COURT IN time to see the flushed and gasping Learned dy Cabon sag from his horse into the arms of one of Lord Arhys’s men. The soldier helped the divine totter a few steps to collapse in the narrow shade of the wall by the almond tree. He held a worried hand to dy Cabon’s face and spoke to a servant, who hurried away. Dy Cabon struggled out of his semi-concealing brown vest-cloak, letting it fall around him to the petal-strewn pavement.

  Foix, looking almost equally hot and harried, jumped from his horse, threw down the reins, and strode
to the divine’s side.

  “Curse it, Foix,” dy Cabon wheezed, staring up at him, “I told you to stop playing with that thing.”

  “Fine,” Foix snarled back. “Ride back and lie down by the side of the road for Jokonan dog meat, if you don’t like it. The pack could feast for a month.”

  The servant arrived, and, at the soldier’s gesture, upended a bucket of water slowly over dy Cabon, soaking his dirty white robes. Dy Cabon did not recoil or protest, but just sat limply, raising his chin and opening his mouth.

  Foix nodded in gratitude and took a tin cup of water that another servant proffered from a second bucket, gulped it down, then scooped up a second and third and repeated the performance. With a fretful grimace, he ladled up another cupful, squatted by dy Cabon’s side, and held it to the divine’s lips. Dy Cabon lifted a shaking hand to it, guzzling noisily.

  The soldier gave Ista a respectful salute as she approached, and murmured to her, “Very close to the heatstroke, that one. It’s a bad sign when a man that big stops sweating. But don’t worry, Royina, we’ll get him right around.”

  Foix’s head swiveled. “Royina!” he cried. “Five gods be thanked! I kiss your hands, I kiss your feet!” He pushed another cup of water into dy Cabon’s grip and lunged over to one knee before her skirts, grasping her hands and planting a hot kiss on the back of each. “Ah!” He pressed them to his sweaty forehead in a less formal but entirely sincere addition. He did not rise immediately, but swung one leg around and sat cross-legged and wheezing, allowing his broad shoulders, for just this moment of safety, to slump.

  He grinned up at Liss, flanking Ista. “So, you made it here, too. Might have known.”

  She grinned back. “Yes, you might.”

  “Been chasing after your dust since Maradi. The fastest horses were always already taken, for some reason.”

  Her smile stretched to a cheery smirk.

  He squinted. “Pretty dress. Quite a change.”

  She drew back a little, self-consciously. “It’s only loaned.”

  At a clacking of hooves, Foix looked up and scrambled to his feet. Lord Arhys, flanked by another mounted soldier, trotted through the gate on his dappled gray, swung down, and flung his reins to a groom.