Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “A busy day, your restored companions and their Jokonan tailpiece have brought us,” he began. “Two of my patrols, to the south and the west, have returned with nothing to report. Two have not yet come back, and they concern me.” He hesitated. “Cattilara did not greet my return. She is angry with me, I think.”

  “For riding out on your duties? She will surely forgive you.”

  “She will not forgive my dying. I am become her enemy in this, as well as her prize.”

  Have you, now? “She still thinks she can get you back. Or at least prevent you from going. She does not, I think, perceive the wasting effect of this delay upon you, being blinded by the surfaces of things. If she sees the disintegrating ghosts at all, I do not think she understands the nature of their damnation.”

  “Damnation,” he breathed. “Is that what my state is. That explains much.”

  “Theologically, I do believe that is precisely what it is, although perhaps Learned dy Cabon could refine the term. I do not know the scholars’ language, but I have seen the thing itself. You are cut off from the nourishment of matter, but blocked from the sustenance of your god. And yet, not by your own will, as the true and mercifully sundered spirits are. By another’s interference. This is … wrong.”

  He stretched and clenched his hands. “It can’t go on. I don’t even bother to pretend to eat, now. I drink only sips. My hands and face and feet are growing numb. Just within the past ten days I’ve noticed it, faintly at first, but it’s getting worse.”

  “That does not sound good,” she agreed. She hesitated. “Have you prayed?”

  His hand went to his left sleeve, and Ista remembered the black-and-gray prayer cord bound secretly there. “Need for the gods comes and goes in a man’s life. Cattilara longed for a child, I made my obeisances … but if the Father of Winter ever heard me, He gave me no sign. I was never the sort to receive portents, or to delude myself that I had. Silence was always my portion, in return for my prayers. But of late it seems to me the silence has grown … emptier. Royina”—his gaze, sparking out of the shadows, seemed to pierce her—“how much longer do I have?”

  She was about to say, I don’t know. But the evasion smacked of cowardice. No Mother’s physician could answer him with any better knowledge than hers. What do I know? She studied him, with both outer and inner sights. “Of ghosts, I have seen many, but more old than new. They accumulate, you see. Most still hold the form of life, of their bodies, for some two or three months after death, but drained of color, and of caring. They slowly erode. By a year after, second sight can usually no longer distinguish human features, though they still have the form of a body. By several years old, they are a white blur, then a fainter blur, then gone. But the time varies greatly, I suspect, depending on the strength of character the person had to begin with.” And the stresses of their dwindling existence? Arhys was unique in her experience. The demands upon his spirit would be huge for a living man. How could his starveling desolate ghost sustain them?

  The great-souled give greatly, from their abundance. But even they must come to the end of themselves, without the upholding hands of … Her mind shied from completing the thought. She reined it round. Their god.

  “So what is my appearance now?”

  “Almost wholly colorless.” She added reluctantly, “You are beginning to blur about the extremities.”

  He rubbed his face with an exploring hand and murmured, “Ah. Much comes clear.” He sat silent for a little, then tapped his knee. “You once told me you had promised Ias not to speak of my father’s true fate to any living soul. Um. Well. Here am I, before you now. Royina, I would know.”

  Ista was surprised into a snort. “You are a most excellent lawyer, for a dead man. This counterthrust would be a very good, sharp point, if it weren’t that I’d lied to you in the first place. Ias never asked me for any such promise. He was scarcely speaking to me by then. The tale I told you was but a shield, to hide my cravenness.”

  “Craven is not how I’d describe you, lady.”

  “One learns better than to hand one’s choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.”

  “Then I ask the truth of you now, as my bier gift. More desirable to me than flowers.”

  “Ah.” She let out her breath in a long sigh. “Yes.” Her fingers traced over the smooth, cool amethysts and silver filigree of the brooch beneath her breast. Dy Lutez wore it in his hat. He wore it there on his last day, I do recall. “This will be but the third time in my life to make this confession.”

  “Third time pays for all, they say.”

  “What do they know?” She snorted again, more softly. “I think not. Still, my auditors have been of the best, as befits my rank and crime. A living saint, an honest divine, the dead man’s dead son … so.” She had told it over in her mind enough times; it needed no further rehearsal. She straightened her back, and began.

  “All men know that Ias’s father, Roya Fonsa, in despair at the loss of his sons and his royacy before the onslaught of the Golden General’s alliance, slew his enemy by a rite of death magic, giving up his own life in the balance.”

  “That is history, yes.”

  “Fewer men know that the rite spilled a residue, a subtle curse afflicting Fonsa’s heirs, and all their works. First Ias, then his son Orico. Teidez. Iselle. Orico’s barren wife, Sara. And me,” she breathed. “And me.”

  “Ias’s was not noted as a fortunate reign for Chalion,” he conceded warily. “Nor Orico’s.”

  “Ias the Unlucky. Orico the Impotent. The nicknames given by the vulgar do not touch the half of it. Ias knew of his curse, knew its origin and its nature, though he did not tell even Orico until he lay on his deathbed. But he shared the knowledge with Arvol dy Lutez, his companion from boyhood, marshal, chancellor, right arm. Possibly, as Orico did later with his own favorites, Ias was trying to use Arvol as a tongs by which to handle the affairs of Chalion without spilling his evil geas upon them. Not that the ploy worked. But it suited Arvol dy Lutez’s ambitions and huge energies well enough. And his arrogance. I grant, your father did love Ias in his way. Ias worshipped him, and was utterly dependent upon his judgment. Arvol even selected me for him.”

  Arhys pulled on his close-trimmed beard. “The rumor I have heard bruited by the envious that they were, ah, more intimate than boon companions, I take to be political slander?”

  “No,” she said simply. “They were lovers for years, as all Cardegoss knew but did not speak of outside the capital walls. My own mother told me, just before I wed, so I would not step into it unawares. I thought her callous, then. Now I think her wise. And worried. Looking back, I think it also was an offer to let me back out, though I missed that implication entirely at the time. Yet for all her candid warnings—which, I found later, Lord dy Lutez had insisted she give me—to prevent trouble for him, mostly, I suspect, though also for Ias—I did not understand what it meant. How could I—a romantic virgin, overwhelmed by what seemed a great victory on the field of love, to be chosen as bride by the roya himself? I nodded and agreed, anxious to seem sophisticated and sensible.”

  “Oh,” he said, very quietly.

  “So if ever you thought your mother untrue to her vows, to take Illvin’s father to her bed, be assured she was not the first dy Lutez to break them. I suspect her mother was less shrewd and honest than mine, preparing her for her high marriage. Or less informed.”

  His brows climbed in reflection. “That accounts for … much, that I did not understand as a boy. I thought my father had cast her off, in anger and humiliation, and that was why he never came here. I never thought that she had cast him off.”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure that Lord dy Lutez was thoroughly offended by her defection,” Ista said. “No matter how justified. His pride would keep him from returning, but his sense of justice, to give him credit, likely also kept him from pursuing any vengeance. Or perhaps it was shame. I can hope.” She added dryly, “In any case, he still had her property to
add to his vast holdings, for compensation of his wounds.”

  He eyed her. “You thought him greedy.”

  “No man accumulates all that he did by chance. Yet I would not call it greed, exactly, for he scarcely knew all he held, and a greedy man numbers each coin.”

  “What would you call it, then?”

  Ista’s brows pinched in. “Consolation,” she tried at last. “His possessions were a magic mirror, to reflect him the size he wished to be.”

  “That,” he said after a moment, “is a fearsome judgment, Royina.”

  She bent her head in an acknowledging nod. “He was a very complex man.” She drew breath, began again. “Arvol and Ias did not betray me by concealing their love. They betrayed me by concealing the curse. I entered into marriage with Ias unaware of my danger, or the danger to my children-to-be. The visions started when I became pregnant with Iselle. The gods, trying to break in upon me. I thought I was going mad. And Ias and dy Lutez let me go on thinking that. For two years.”

  He jerked a little at the sudden fierceness in her voice. “That seems … most unkind.”

  “That was cowardice. And contempt for my wits and spine. They mired me in the consequences of their secret, then refused to trust me with its cause. I was a mere girl, you see, unfit to bear such a burden. Though not unfit to bear Ias’s children into that darkness. Except the gods did not seem to regard me as unfit. For it was me They came to. Not Ias. Not dy Lutez. Me.”

  Her lips twisted. “I wonder—in retrospect—how put out Arvol was by that? He would have been the sole shining hero to save Ias, if he could. It was his accustomed role. And indeed, for a while it did appear that the gods had assigned it to him.

  “At last—do even the gods grow impatient with our obtuseness?—the Mother of Summer Herself appeared to me, not in dream but in waking vision. I was prostrated—I had not yet learned to be suspicious of the gods. She told me that the curse might be broken and carried out of the world by a man who would lay down his life three times for the blighted House of Chalion. Being young, and frenzied with anxiety for my babies, I took Her words too literally, and concluded that She meant me to devise a perilous rite to accomplish this paradox.”

  “Perilous indeed. And, um …” His brow wrinkled. “Paradoxical.”

  “I told all to Ias and Arvol, and we took counsel together. Arvol, afflicted by our weeping, volunteered to attempt the hero’s role. We hit upon drowning as the method, for men were known to come back from that death, sometimes. And it does not disfigure. Arvol studied it, collected tales, investigated victims both lost and saved. In a cavern beneath the Zangre, we set up the cask, the ropes, the winch. The altars to all the gods. Arvol let himself be stripped, bound, lowered upside down, until his struggles ceased, until the light of his soul went out to my inner eye.”

  He began to speak; she held up her hand, to block the misunderstanding. “No. Not yet. We drew him out—pressed the water from his throat, pounded on his heart, cried out our prayers, until he choked and breathed again. And I could see the crack in the curse.

  “We had planned the ritual three nights in succession. On the second night, all went the same, until his hair brushed the surface of the water, and he gasped out to stop, he could not bear it. He cried I was trying to assassinate him, for jealousy’s sake. Ias hesitated. I was shaken, sick in my stomach—but I let reason compel me. It was Arvol’s own chosen method, it had worked once … I wailed for fear for my children, and for the frustration of coming so close, to miss saving them by a handbreadth. For rage at his slander. And for raising my hopes so high upon his pride, then dashing them so low upon his frailty.” She added simply, “I’d believed in his account of himself, you see.”

  In the night, in some hollow below the castle walls, insects sang, a thin, high keening. It was the only sound. Arhys had forgotten to breathe. His body, perhaps, was losing the habit. She wondered how long it would take him to notice.

  “When we drew him out the second time, he was dead indeed, and not all our tears and prayers, regrets and recriminations, and oh, there were many of those last, brought him back again. Ias half decided, later, that Arvol’s accusation of jealousy was true; half the time, I agreed myself. The fault was … Ias’s, for weakness, and mine, for impatience and unwisdom. For if Ias had stood against me, I would have yielded, or if I had listened to my heart and not my head, and allowed Arvol more time, who is to say that after another day, or week, or month, he might have recovered his nerve? I’ll never know, now. The gods forsook me. The curse remained, unbroken, worse in its effects than ever. Until another generation threw up another man, more fitted to lift it from the world.” She drew breath. “And that is how I came to murder your father. If you really want to know.”

  He was silent for a long time, remembered to inhale, and said, “Lady, I think this is not a confession. This is an indictment.”

  She rocked back. “Of Arvol? Yes,” she said slowly, “that, too. If he had never volunteered, I’d have thought no less of him. If he had died on the first attempt, well, I would have thought the task beyond any man, or my design mistaken. But to demonstrate the true possibility, and then fail … shattered my heart. It was not, I came later to learn, death by rote that the gods required. One cannot force another’s soul to grow wide enough to admit a god to the world, but that dilation, not the mere dying, was what was wanted. Arvol dy Lutez was a great man. But … not quite great enough.”

  He stared into the darkness. The torch had almost burned out, though at the top of the stairs Liss’s candle still glowed. She sat with her chin propped in her hands, eyelids drooping; the page had fallen asleep, curled up against her skirts.

  “If my father had lived,” he said at last, “do you think he would ever have called me to his side?”

  “If he had wrenched open his soul wide enough to succeed, I think it would thereafter have been more than wide enough to encompass you. Those who have admitted a god do not shrink back to their former size, in my experience. If he had never made the attempt … well, he was never quite small enough to turn aside from hazard, either. So, I do not know.”

  “Mm.” It was a little noise, but contained a cache of pain nonetheless. He glanced up at the sky, reading the clock of the stars. “Royina, I keep you from your bed.”

  But not the reverse. In the long, lonely watches of his unsleeping nights, what did he now think about? She took the hint nonetheless and rose. He stood with her, his war gear creaking.

  He took her hand, half bowed, briefly pressed his cool forehead against its back. “Royina, I do thank you for these garlands of truth. I know they cost you dear.”

  “They are dry and bitter thorns. I wish I could give you some better bier gift.” With all my cracking heart, I do wish it.

  “I do not desire any softer wreath.”

  Liss, seeing them pace once more across the court, prodded the page awake and came to the foot of the stairs to receive Ista back from Arhys’s arm. Arhys saluted them solemnly and turned away, his sleepy page pattering after. The echoes of his receding footfalls in the archway sounded like muffled drums in Ista’s ears.

  IT WAS LONG BEFORE ISTA SLEPT. IN THE GRAY OF DAWN, SHE SEEMED to hear thumping and low voices in the distance, but her exhaustion drew her back down into her pillow. She fell into an evil dream where she sat at a high table with Lady Cattilara. The marchess, glowing faintly violet, plied her guest with food until Ista’s belly strained, and drowned her wits in drink until Ista lay back in her chair unable to rise for the paralysis in her limbs.

  Only a much louder thumping at the door to the outer chamber roused her from this bizarre dream imprisonment. She exhaled in relief to find herself in her own bed, her body normally proportioned and mobile again, if feeling anything but well rested. By the bright lines seeping through her shutters, it was broad day.

  Liss’s steps sounded, then voices: Foix’s, deep and urgent, dy Cabon’s, sharp and excited. Ista had already swung out of bed and pulled her black
robe about herself when the door between the chambers opened and Liss poked her head in.

  “Royina, something very strange has happened …”

  Ista pushed past her. Foix was dressed for the day in blue tunic, trousers, boots and sword, his face flushed with exertion; dy Cabon’s white undertunic was on askew, its front buttons mismatched with their buttonholes, his feet yet bare.

  “Royina.” Foix ducked his head. “Did you see or hear anything, at Lord Illvin’s chambers or on the gallery, along about dawn? Your room is closer than ours.”

  “No—maybe. I fell back to sleep.” She grimaced in memory of the unpleasant dream. “I was very tired. Was there something?”

  “Lady Cattilara came at dawn with some servants and carried off Lord Illvin on a pallet. To take him down to the temple to pray over, and consult with the temple physicians, she said.”

  “The temple physicians should come up to attend upon him in Porifors, I would think,” said Ista, disturbed. “Did Lord Arhys go with them?”

  “The march is nowhere to be found this morning. I first learned of all this when one of his officers asked me if I’d seen him.”

  “I last saw Arhys last night. He came to speak with me down in the courtyard, around midnight. Liss was there.”

  The girl nodded. She had evidently wakened before Ista—she was dressed and had a tray with morning tea and fresh bread sitting ready on a table—but not much before, for this all seemed news to her as well.

  “Well,” Foix continued, “I felt strangely uneasy—probably left over from the bad dreams I’d had last night, which really made me wonder about the castle food, but anyway, I made an excuse to walk down to the temple to see what was happening. Lady Cattilara had never come there. I asked around. I finally discovered that she had commandeered a supply wagon and a team of dray horses from the garrison’s stable down there. No one knew what had been loaded aboard, but the wagon, with Goram driving and one of the servants sitting beside him, was seen leaving the town gate at least an hour ago, on the road south.”