Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Illvin’s head, too, had turned at the cry. By his lack of further craning, he also shared her surfeit of horrors. But then he looked back at her, his eyes narrowing. “You looked around before we heard anything,” he noted.

  “Yes. I see the sorcerous attacks as flashes of light in my inner vision. Like little bolts of lightning, flying from source to target, or like streaking fire-arrows. I can’t tell what their effect will be just by seeing them, though; they all look much the same.”

  “Can you tell sorcerers from ordinary men just by looking? I can’t.”

  “Oh, yes. Both Cattilara’s demon and Foix’s appear to me as shapes of shadow and light within the boundaries of their own souls, which, since they are both living persons, are bounded by their bodies. Foix’s demon still retains the shape of a bear. Arhys’s ragged soul trails him, as though it struggles to keep up.”

  “How far away can you tell if a person is a sorcerer?”

  She shrugged. “As far as my eye can see, I suppose. No, farther than that: for my inner eye sees spirit shapes right through matter, if I pay attention, and concentrate, and perhaps close my outer eyes to reduce the confusion. Tents, walls, bodies, all are transparent to the gods, and to god-sight.”

  “What about a sorcerer’s sight?”

  “I am not sure. Foix seemed not to have much, before I shared mine, but his elemental is an inexperienced one.”

  “Huh.” He stood a moment, looking increasingly abstracted. “Come over here.” He took her hand and towed her to the western side of the tower, overlooking the walnut grove. “Do you suppose that you could give an exact tally of Joen’s sorcerers, if you tried? In her camp, from here?”

  Ista blinked. “I don’t know. I could try.”

  The trees’ feet were now wading in gray shadow, though their very tops still glowed golden green in the last of the light. Campfires twinkled through the leaves, and a suggestion of the pale squares of many tents. Men’s voices carried enough to be heard up on the battlements, although not well enough to make out what they said in the Roknari tongue. On the far side of the grove, the cluster of big green tents, gaudy with pennants, began to glow like verdant lanterns from the lamps being set within them.

  Ista took a long breath to try to compose her mind. She extended her perceptions, closing her eyes. If she could sense Joen or Sordso from here, could they sense her? And if Joen could sense her … she took another breath, banished the frightening thought, and determinedly uncurled her soul once more.

  Upwards of five hundred faint soul-lights moved like fireflies among the trees, the Jokonan soldiers and camp followers busy about their ordinary tasks. A smattering of souls glowed with a stronger, much more violent and disrupted light. Yes, there were the threads, the snakes, wavering through the air from those scattered whorls to converge all in one dark, disturbing spot. Even as she watched, one line crossed another as their possessors moved in space, passing like two strands of insubstantial yarn that did not knot or tangle.

  “Yes, I can see them,” she told Illvin. “Some are snubbed up near to Joen, some are all spread out across the camp.” Her lips moved as she made her count. “Six hug the command tents, twelve are arranged near the front of the grove, nearest to Porifors. Eighteen altogether.”

  She peeked, turned half around toward the river and the Jokonans’ second camp investing the town, and closed her eyes once more. Then turned fully around, toward the bivouac of the third column that had set up along the ridge to the east of the castle, cutting the road to Oby and commanding the valley upstream. “All the sorcerers seem to be in the main camp near Joen. I see no ribbons reaching to the other two camps. Yes, of course. She would want all her sorcerers as close under her eye as possible.”

  She completed her turn and opened her eyes again. “Most of the sorcerers seem to be sheltered in tents. One is standing under a tree, looking this way.” She could not see his physical body, through the leaves, but she could tell which tree it was.

  “Hm,” said Illvin, staring over her shoulder. “Can Foix tell which is which? What man is a sorcerer, what man is not?”

  “Oh, yes. I mean, he can now. He saw the sorcery light with me when the cups broke—and again, standing on the wall when the rest of it began.” She glanced warily back over her shoulder at Illvin’s tense, closed expression. His eyes were tight with thought, some notion that did not seem to give him much pleasure. “What are you thinking?”

  “I am thinking … that by your testimony Arhys appears to be immune to sorcery, but sorcerers do not appear to be immune to steel. As Cattilara proved upon poor Umerue. If Arhys could close with them, just them, and yet somehow avoid the other fifteen hundred Jokonans around Porifors …” He drew a breath, and wheeled. “Liss.”

  She jerked upright. “Lord Illvin?”

  “Go and find my lord brother, and ask him to attend upon us here. Fetch Foix, too, if he is to be found.”

  She nodded, a bit wide-eyed, scrambled up, and scuffed rapidly down the tower’s turning stairs. Illvin stared out over Prince Sordso and Princess Joen’s camp as if memorizing every detail. Ista leaned uneasily by his side, studying that profile suddenly gone distant and cool.

  He looked back and smiled down at her in apology. “I am seized by a thought. I fear you will find me a rather distractible man.”

  It wasn’t how she would describe him, but she smiled briefly back in attempted reassurance.

  All too soon, footsteps sounded on the stairs. Arhys emerged into the luminous twilight, followed by Liss and Foix. Arhys looked scarcely more corpselike than anyone else in Porifors at present, but his face was spared the usual smears of sweat. Foix’s stolidity masked a deep depletion. He had spent the afternoon clumsily trying to undo sorceries all over the castle, to little effect. Dy Cabon had named the effort fundamentally futile, for various theological reasons that no one stayed to listen to, and yet had begged Foix’s aid himself when faced with the rising demands of the sick.

  “Arhys, come here,” said Illvin. “Look at this.” His brother joined him at the western parapet. “Five gods attest we know this ground. Royina Ista says there are but eighteen sorcerers in Joen’s pack altogether. A dozen lie in the front of the camp, along there …”—his hand swept in an arc—“six more in the command tents, a rather better guarded area, I suspect. One big circle could pass round them all, if it were rapid enough. How many sorcerers do you think you could excise with steel?”

  Arhys’s brows rose. “As many as I could close with, I suppose. But I doubt they would just stand there while we galloped up to them. As soon as they thought to drop our horses, we’d be afoot.”

  “What if we attacked in the dark? You said you see better in the dark these days than other men.”

  “Hm.” Arhys’s gaze upon the grove intensified.

  “Royina Ista.” Illvin turned urgently to her—and where was all that Sweet Ista now? “What happens when a leashed sorcerer is slain?”

  Ista frowned. Surely the question was rhetorical. “You’ve seen it yourself. The demon, together with whatever pieces of its mount’s soul it has digested, jumps to whatever new host it can reach. The body dies. What the fate of the remaining parts of the person’s soul may be, I do not know.”

  “And one other thing,” Illvin said, excitement leaking into his voice. “The leash is broken. Or at least—Cattilara’s demon broke from control at Umerue’s death. More: at that moment, the free demon became Joen’s rebellious enemy, dedicated to flight from her as fast as possible. How many demons could Joen suffer to have cut away from her array—jumping randomly into unprepared hosts, or even turning on her—before she was forced to retreat in disorder?”

  “If she doesn’t have others in reserve, ready to harness like a fresh team of horses,” said Arhys.

  “No,” said Ista slowly, “I don’t think she can. All must be there, tied in her net, or they will fly—away from each other if not from her. By Umerue’s testimony, it took Joen three years to develop this
array, to bring each sorcerer-slave to some apex of carefully selected, stolen skills. Without another visit to whatever back door of hell her master demon can unlock, I doubt she can replace them. And all she’ll get at first is a spate of mindless, formless, ignorant elementals. We know she spills them, too; it cannot be a well-controlled process, not when dealing with the essence of disorder itself. Although … Cattilara’s demon fears recapture; if that is not just some filial obsession of Umerue’s, it implies recapture is possible. I don’t know how quickly Joen might effect it.”

  “With several freed demons flying in all directions, it would be more difficult, I should guess,” said Illvin.

  Arhys leaned his elbow on the stone wall and eyed his brother. “You are thinking of a sortie. A sorcerer-hunt.”

  “Aye.”

  “It cannot be done. I am certain to take wounds—which Catti would be forced to bear.”

  Illvin looked away. “I was thinking the royina could switch you back to me. For the occasion, as it were.”

  Ista gasped protest. “Do you realize what that would mean? Arhys’s injuries would be yours.”

  “Yes, well …” Illvin swallowed. “But then Arhys could go on for quite a bit more than his enemies would guess. Perhaps physicians or women could stay at my side, binding up the leaks as they spring. Buying extra minutes.”

  Arhys frowned. “And then … what? At your last gasp, break the link? Return all my wounds to me at once?”

  Ista tried not to let her voice emerge as a shriek. “Leaving you trapped in a hacked-apart body that can neither die nor heal?”

  Arhys said vaguely, “I really don’t have all that much feeling in my body anymore… . Maybe I might not be trapped. Maybe”—his ravishing gray eyes rose to meet Ista’s, and the sudden light in them terrified her down to her bones—“I might be released.”

  “To the death of nothingness? No!” said Ista.

  “Indeed not!” said Illvin. “I mean the sortie to swing round and return to Porifors. The others would ride to guard you, and clear your way to the sorcerers. And make sure you got back.”

  “Mm.” Arhys stared down into the dusk. “How many men do you think it would take?”

  “A hundred would be best, but we do not have a hundred. Fifty might make it.”

  “We do not have fifty, either. Illvin, we do not have twenty, not mounted.”

  Illvin straightened up from the parapet. The excitement drained from his face. “Twenty is too few.”

  “Too few to ride out? Or to ride back?”

  “If too few to ride back, then too few to ride out. I could not ask it of any man if I were not riding myself, and I would perforce be detained in here.”

  “Only in a sense,” said Arhys. He was looking increasingly, disturbingly, intent. “We are dying here by the hour. Worse—Lord dy Oby will ride apace to our relief. He was never laggard, but for the sake of his daughter he will brook no delay. Without warning of Joen’s demonic deceits, he will race his troops into this trap.”

  “He cannot be here before day after tomorrow, at the soonest,” said Illvin.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. If today’s courier was taken by the Jokonan screen and failed to arrive at Oby, he’ll know at once, for I know the warnings about the ambush of Foix and the divine reached him. The fortress of Oby is already well aroused.” Arhys’s frown deepened. “Also, the longer we wait, the worse condition we will all be in.”

  “That would certainly appear to be true,” Illvin conceded.

  “And,” his voice lowered, “the worse condition I will be in. Our men are dying now without a blade being lifted or a quarrel being fired. By nightfall tomorrow, at this rate, Sordso’s forces will be able to walk unopposed into a castle manned only by corpses, unmoving save for one. And I will be left facing the same enemy—alone and unsupported.”

  “Ah,” said Illvin, sounding shaken.

  “Had you not thought it through? I’m surprised. Royina”—he turned to Ista—“I am sundered now. Freeing me from this body will not change that state. Let it be done while … while there is still some honor in it. Some use.”

  “Arhys, you cannot ask this of me.”

  “Yes. I can.” His voice fell further. “And you cannot refuse me.”

  Ista was trembling, both at what he proposed and at what he envisioned. That solitary fate was, she had to admit, the logical progression of events.

  “Arhys, no, this is too fey,” protested Illvin.

  “Fey is a man who looks forward to death. I look back upon mine. I am beyond fey, I think. If this hazard is to be cast at all, it must be soon. In the dark before dawn.”

  “This night?” said Illvin. Even he, who had advanced the plan, sounded appalled at its sudden acceleration.

  “This very night. We’ve been shoved most forcefully onto the defensive, and the Jokonans do not look to us, in our present shock, to turn it about. If ever the gods gave me the gift for finding the moment on the field, I swear to you, this is one.”

  Illvin’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

  Arhys smiled slightly and turned again to view the walnut grove in the fading light. Though perhaps not fading for him, Ista was reminded. “So, how would I find these sorcerers and not waste time butchering ordinary men?”

  Foix cleared his throat. “I can see them.”

  Behind them, sitting small and cross-legged by the wall again, Liss caught her breath.

  Arhys looked across at Foix. “Would you ride out with me, dy Gura? It’s a good pairing. I think you are less vulnerable to these sorcerous attacks than any other man here.”

  “I … let me look at the ground.” Foix, too, advanced to the battlement and leaned upon it, staring down at the camp. Ista saw by the way his eyes opened and closed that he marshaled his second sight to study this challenge.

  Arhys turned to Ista. “Royina, can you manage this thing? Neither Illvin nor I will be able to speak to you—we must rely on your judgment when to make or break our links.”

  I am every kind of afraid. Physically. Magically. Morally. But mostly the last. “I think I could cut Illvin free of you, yes. What about Cattilara?”

  “I would spare her,” said Arhys. “Let her sleep.”

  “To wake a widow? I am not sure that is a betrayal she could ever forgive. She may be young and foolish, but she is not a child now, and will never be a child again. In any case, she must be allowed to wake and eat, that she may lend you strength, and not fail through no fault of her own.”

  Illvin said, “I fear if she has any hint of this, she will grow quite frenzied. And I doubt her demon will be on our side either.”

  The stars were coming out, overhead. On the western horizon, glowing pink feathers of cloud were fading to gray. So much indifferent beauty, in the world of matter …

  “I must take thought for Cattilara,” said Ista. It seems no one else is willing to.

  From the deepening shadows, Foix spoke: “Lord Arhys, if you decide to ride out, I will go with you. If the royina will release me to your command.”

  Ista hesitated for three sick heartbeats. “I release you.”

  “Thank you, Royina, for this honor,” Foix said formally.

  “Come,” said Arhys to Illvin. “Let us go see if there is enough unbroken gear left in Castle Porifors to outfit this curious hunt. Foix, attend.” He turned for the stairs.

  Illvin strode back to grasp Ista’s hand and lift it to his lips. “I shall see you shortly.”

  “Yes,” whispered Ista. The grip tightened, and was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  IT WAS CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT BEFORE LORD ARHYS WENT TO REST in his chambers, so that Cattilara, on the other side of the door, might be roused to eat. His page removed his boots, but no more, and settled by the foot of the bed to guard his repose. Ista thought the exhausted boy would be asleep on the floor before five minutes had passed. Arhys lay back on his bed, eyes wide and dark in the light of the room’s sole candle.

  �
�Be tender with her,” he pleaded to Ista. “She has had to endure far too much.”

  “I will use my very best judgment,” Ista returned. Arhys accepted her words with a nod. It was Illvin, overseeing the dispositions before returning to the night’s too-eventful watch, who cocked a curious eyebrow at her as they turned away.

  “Be as careful of her as of her demon, and I don’t mean it the way Arhys does,” he muttered to Ista. “After that accursed escapade with the wagon, I believe there is no limit to what she would do in pursuit of her ends.”

  “I will use,” said Ista neutrally, “my very best judgment.” She let Foix and Liss pass before her into Lady Cattilara’s chamber and closed the door upon him, gently but firmly.

  The most levelheaded of Cattilara’s ladies was just arriving with the meal tray. The haggard look on her face, as well as the care she took setting the food down, told Ista she recognized the cost of it. Ista dismissed her only as far as a seat on a chest. Liss stayed by Ista’s elbow as she approached Cattilara’s bed.

  “Foix, stand by her feet. Keep an eye on her demon,” Ista directed. Foix nodded and did so. Ista was unhappy to be demanding yet one more duty of him, when he was so plainly drained to the point of swaying on his feet. He desperately needed to rest for a few hours before the sortie. But Joen had taught her greater caution of demons.

  Ista called up her inner sight and closed her hands around the flow of soul-fire from Catti’s heart, reducing it to the tiniest trickle of contact with Arhys. Ista imagined the look of life flowing from his face in the next room, and her chest tightened. The demon shadow squirmed in agitation, but did not challenge Ista’s control. Cattilara’s eyes flew open, and her breath drew in. She sat up abruptly, then swayed, dizzy. Liss pressed a tin cup of water into her hand. By the way she guzzled, pressing it to her dry lips, Ista thought they were none too soon with this sustenance. Liss transferred the tray to a small table by the bedside and drew off the linen cover. Plain fare, and stale, presented on a miscellany of battered old plates.