Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Catti glared over the cup at Ista and glowered down at the tray. “What is this? Servants’ food? Or a prisoner’s? Is the mistress of Porifors so dethroned by her usurper, now?”

  “It is the last and best untainted food in the keep, reserved for you. We are now surrounded by a Jokonan army and besieged by a troop of sorcerers. Their demon magic is chewing everything within these walls to pieces and spitting it out upon us. All the water is gone. The meat seethes with maggots. Half the courts are burned, and a third of the horses lie dead. Men are dying tonight below us of disease and injury without ever having come within bowshot of Joen and Sordso’s troops. Joen’s new way of making war is ingenious, cruel, and effective. Extraordinarily effective. So eat, because it is the only meal Arhys will have tonight.”

  Cattilara gritted her teeth, but at least she gritted them on her first bite of dry bread. “We could have fled. We should have fled! I could have had Arhys forty miles from here by now, and out of this. Curse you for a lack-witted bitch!”

  Foix and Liss stirred at the insult, but Ista’s raised hand stayed them. “Arhys would not have thanked you. And who is we? Are you even certain whose voice speaks from inside your head right now? Eat.”

  Catti gnawed, gracelessly, but too driven by her ferocious waking hunger to spurn the proffered meal. Liss kept the water coming, for Cattilara’s sunken features betrayed how dangerously parched she had grown. Ista let her chew and swallow for several minutes, until she began visibly to slow.

  “Later tonight,” Ista began again, “Arhys rides out on a hazardous sortie, a gamble to save us all. Or die trying.”

  “You mean him to die,” Catti mumbled. “You hate him. You hate me.”

  “You are twice mistaken, though I admit to a strong desire to slap you at times. Now, for instance. Lady Cattilara, you are the wife of a soldier-commander and the daughter of a soldier-commander. You cannot possibly have been raised, here in this dire borderland, to such wild self-indulgence.”

  Cattilara looked away, perhaps to conceal a flash of shame in her face. “This stupid war has always dragged on. It will always drag on. But once Arhys is gone, he’s gone forever. And all the good in the world goes with him. The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!”

  “I have cursed them for years,” said Ista dryly. “Turnabout being fair.” Cattilara was furious, distraught, writhing in overwhelming pain. But was she divorced altogether from reason?

  So what is reality now, here in this waking nightmare? Where is reason? Absurd, that I of all women should insist on reason.

  “Keep chewing.” Ista straightened her weary back, crossed her arms. “I have a proposition for you.”

  Cattilara glowered in suspicion.

  “You may accept or refuse, but you may not have other choices. It quite resembles a miracle, in that regard. Arhys rides out tonight against Joen’s sorcerers. Illvin has volunteered to accept his wounds, to the point of death. It seems to me that two bodies, both nourishing Arhys’s sword arm and bearing his hurts, would carry him farther than one. Perhaps just the needed edge, that little difference between almost succeeding, and almost failing. You can be a part of his ride, or you can be shut out of it.”

  Foix, startled, said, “Royina, Lord Arhys would not desire this!”

  “Quite,” said Ista coolly. “No one else here will offer you this choice, Cattilara.”

  “You cannot do this behind his back!” said Foix.

  “I am the appointed executor of this rite. This is women’s business now, Foix. Be silent. Cattilara”—Ista drew breath—“widow you are and shall be, but the grief you will carry into the rest of your life will be different depending on the choices you make tonight.”

  “How better?” snarled Cattilara. Tears were leaking from her eyes now. “Without Arhys, all is ashes.”

  “I didn’t say better. I said, different. You may accept the part apportioned to you, or you may lie down and be passed over. If you do not take your part, and he fails, you will never, ever know whether you might have made the difference. If you accept the part, and he still falls—then you will know that, too.

  “Arhys would have protected you from this choice, as a father would a beloved child. Arhys is wrong in this. I give you a woman’s choice, here, at the last gasp. He looks to spare you pain this night. I look to your nights for the next twenty years. There is neither right nor wrong in this, precisely. But the time to amend all choices runs out like Porifors’s water.”

  “You think he will die in this fight,” grated Cattilara.

  “He’s been dead for three months. I did not war against his death, but against his damnation. I have lost. In my lifetime, I have looked two gods in the eye, and it has seared me, till I am afraid of almost nothing in the world of matter. But I am afraid of this, for him. He stands this night on the edge of the true death, the death that lasts forever, and there is none to pull him back from that precipice. Not even the gods can save him if he falls now.”

  “Your choice is no choice. It’s death all ways.”

  “No: death in different ways. You had more of him than any woman alive. Now the wheel turns. Be assured, someday it will turn for you. All are equal in this. He goes first, but not uniquely. Nor alone, for he will have a large Jokonan escort, I do think.”

  “He will if I have anything to do with it,” growled Foix.

  “Yes. Do you imagine not one of them is also beloved, as Arhys is? You have a chance to let Arhys go out in serenity, with his mind clear and unimpeded, concentrated as the sword which is his symbol. I will not give you leave to send him off harassed and dismayed, distracted and grieved.”

  Cattilara snarled, “Why should I give him up to death—or to the gods, or to you, or to anyone? He’s mine. All my life is his.”

  “Then you shall be hollow and echoing indeed, when he is gone.”

  “This disaster is not my doing! If people had just done things my way, this all could have been averted. Everyone is against me—”

  The food on the tray was all gone. Sighing, Ista touched her ligature, and opened the channel wide once more. Cattilara sank back, cursing. The flow of soul-fire from Catti’s heart was slow and surly, but it would suffice for the next few hours.

  “I would have liked to give her a chance to say good-bye,” said Ista sadly. “Lord Illvin’s remarks on kisses withheld and words unspoken weigh much on my mind.”

  Foix, his face appalled, said, “Her remarks were better left unspoken to Lord Arhys just now, I think.”

  “So I judged. Five gods, why was I appointed to this court? Go, Foix, get what rest you may. It is your most urgent duty now.”

  “Aye, Royina.” He glanced at Liss. “Will you come down to see us off? Later on?”

  “Yes,” whispered Liss.

  Foix started to speak, seemed to find his throat strangely uncooperative, nodded thanks, and bowed his way out.

  ISTA, TOO, EVENTUALLY WENT TO LIE DOWN IN HER CHAMBERS FOR A few hours. She longed for a dreamless slumber, feared the sleep of dreams, but in any case merely dozed, disquieted by the occasional agonized noises that filtered in through her lattice from a castle disintegrating, it seemed, about all their ears. At length Liss, drawn face candlelit by a stub in a brass holder whose glass vase lay in shards somewhere, came to rouse her. Ista was already awake and dressed. The bleak mourning garb was growing dirty and frayed, but its black robe suited her mood and the shadows of this hour.

  Liss followed her, holding up the meager light, as Ista eased out the door onto the gallery. She took three steps down the empty stairs, and stopped. Her breath caught.

  A tall, somber man stood on the treads two below her, so that his face was level with hers, in precisely the position she had kissed and challenged the dead Arhys, half a lifetime ago here. His face and form were uncertain in outline; she thought he looked a bit like Arhys, a bit like Arvol, and more than a little like her own dead father, though dy Baocia had been a shorter, thicker man. He was not
much, she thought, like Ias.

  He was dressed as an officer of Porifors, in mail and a gray-and-gold tabard; but the mail gleamed, and the tabard was pressed and perfect, its embroidery bright as fire. His hair and beard were pure gray, cut short as Arhys’s were, clean and fine. The wavering candlelight did not reflect from his upturned face, nor from the endless depths of his eyes; they shone instead with their own effulgent light.

  Ista swallowed, raised her chin. Stiffened her knees. “I wasn’t expecting You here.”

  The Father of Winter favored her with a grave nod. “All gods attend on all battlefields. What parents would not wait as anxiously by their door, looking again and again up the road, when their child was due home from a long and dangerous journey? You have waited by that door yourself, both fruitfully and in vain. Multiply that anguish by ten thousands, and pity me, sweet Ista. For my great-souled child is very late, and lost upon his road.”

  The deep resonance of his voice seemed to make her chest vibrate, her bones ring. She could barely breathe. Water clouded her vision and fell from her unblinking eyes. “I know it, Sire,” she whispered.

  “My calling voice cannot reach him. He cannot see the light in my window, for he is sundered from me, blind and deaf and stumbling, with none to take his hand and guide him. Yet you may touch him, in his darkness. And I may touch you, in yours. Then take you this thread to draw him through the maze, where I cannot go.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the brow. His lips burned like cold metal. Fearfully, she reached up and touched his beard, as she had Arhys’s that day, tickling strange and soft beneath her palm. As he bent his head, a tear fell as a snowflake upon the back of her hand, melted, and vanished.

  “Am I to be a spiritual conductor on Your behalf, now?” she asked, dazed.

  “No; my doorway.” He smiled enigmatically at her, a white streak in the night like lightning across her senses, and her reeling mind slipped from dazed to dazzled. “I will wait there for him, for a little while.” He stepped backward, and the stair was empty again.

  Ista stood, shaken. The spot on the back of her left hand where his tear had splashed was icy cold.

  “Royina?” said Liss, very cautiously, stopped behind her. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Did you see a man?”

  “Um … no?”

  “I am sorry.”

  Liss held up her candle. “You’re crying.”

  “Yes. I know. It’s all right. Let us go on now. I think perhaps you had better hold my arm till we get down the stairs.”

  The stone court, the archway, the star court with its restive horse line, and the gate into the forecourt passed in a dark blur. Liss held her arm the whole way, and frowned at its fierce trembling.

  The torchlit forecourt was crowded with men and horses. Most of the flowerpots were broken, fallen from the walls or tipped, spilling their dry soil. The succulents were smashed, the more tender flowers wilted and limp like cooked greens. The two espaliered trees on the far wall shed dry leaves in the breathless night heat, falling one by one atop a drift of rotting petals.

  Foix was the first to notice her arrival; his head turned, and his mouth opened. No doubt she moved in a cloud of god light, just at present, being so recently touched. And I bear a burden that I am most gravely charged to deliver. Her eye swept the court, found Arhys and Illvin, but her attention was temporarily distracted by the horse they both studied. From a distance.

  It was a tall, long-nosed chestnut stallion, held by three sweating grooms. A blindfold covered its eyes beneath its bridle, which was fitted with a deep curb bit. One groom held its upper lip tightly in a twitch. Its ears were back flat, and it squealed angrily, showing long yellow teeth, and kicked out. Illvin was standing well back from it, looking aggrieved.

  Ista came up beside him and said, “Lord Illvin, do you know that stallion is possessed of an elemental?”

  “So Foix has just informed me, Royina. It explains a lot about that horse.”

  Ista peered through half-closed eyes at the writhing mauve shadow within the animal. “Grant you, it appears to be a small, unformed, stupid one.”

  “That explains yet more. Bastard’s hell. I was going to lend the accursed beast to Arhys. His good dappled gray has gone lame, along with half the horses that remain to us—an outbreak of thrush, developing with unnatural speed, and I hope Arhys can soon deliver our thanks to whichever Jokonan sorcerer thought of that one.”

  “Is this an especially good warhorse?”

  “No, but no one will care if Arhys rides it to death. In fact, I think the grooms are hoping he will. Five gods know I’ve tried to, without success.”

  “Hm,” said Ista. She walked forward; the two grooms holding the beast’s head squeaked protest. Her eyes narrowed, and she reached up and placed her god-splashed hand upon the stallion’s forehead. A tiny six-pointed mark burned upon her skin, snow-white to her outer vision, a fierce spark to her inner eye. “Remove its blindfold.”

  The groom glanced somewhat desperately at Illvin, who nodded permission but drew his sword and held it with the flat out, watching tensely.

  The horse’s eyes were dark brown, with purple centers. Most horses’ eyes had purple centers, Ista reminded herself, but they didn’t usually have quite so deep a glow. The eyes fixed on her, and rolled whitely. She stared back. The animal suddenly grew very still. Ista stood on tiptoe, grabbed one ear, and whispered toward it, “Behave for Lord Arhys. Or I will make you wish I’d merely ripped your guts out, strangled you with them, and fed you to the gods.”

  “Dogs,” corrected the nervous groom holding the twitch.

  “Them, too,” said Ista. “Take off the twitch and stand away.”

  “Lady … ?”

  “It’s all right.”

  The groom backed away. The horse, shivering, flicked its ears up to strict attention and arched its neck to bring its face, submissively, flat to Ista’s torso. It gave a brief nudge, leaving a trail of red horsehairs across her black silk robe, and stood perfectly quietly.

  “Do you do that sort of thing often?” Illvin inquired, strolling over. With extreme caution, he reached out to give the beast an experimental pat on the neck.

  “No,” sighed Ista. “It has been a day for unique experiences.”

  Illvin was simply dressed in light linen trousers and his spark-spotted shirt, in preparation for his role to come. Arhys looked so much as he had when Ista had seen him for the very first time that she caught her breath. Except that his mail and tabard were not blood-spattered. Yet. He smiled soberly at her as he came to her side.

  “A word, Royina, before I go. Two words.”

  “As many as you please.”

  He lowered his voice. “First, I thank you for bearing me up to a better death. One less shameful, small, and stupid than my first.”

  “Our men may yet surprise you on that score,” said Illvin gruffly. On the far side of the forecourt, a mere dozen soldiers were also preparing their mounts. Pejar was among them; his face was flushed with fever, Ista noted. He should have been lying on a pallet, not attempting this. Then she wondered how few men in Porifors were still able to walk at all, at this hour.

  Arhys smiled briefly at his brother and forbore to argue or correct, or pull that thin hope from his hands. He turned back to Ista. “Second, I beg a boon.”

  “Anything within my power.”

  His clear eyes fixed on her with penetrating intensity; she felt targeted. “If this dy Lutez manages to die well tonight, let it complete the set that was left undone so long ago. Let what victory I may gain swallow up forever the old, cold dereliction. And be you healed of the long wound that another dy Lutez dealt you.”

  “Oh,” said Ista. Oh. She dared not let her voice break; she had still an office to perform. “I was given a message for you, too.”

  His brows rose; he looked a little taken aback. “No courier has penetrated the Jokonan blockade for a day. What messenger was this?”

  �
��I met Him on the stairs but now. It is this.” She swallowed to clear her voice.

  “Your Father calls you to His Court. You need not pack; you go garbed in glory as you stand. He waits eagerly by His palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at His high table by His side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved. In this I speak true. Bend your head.”

  Wide-eyed, astonished, he did so. She pressed her lips to his brow, the pale skin neither hot nor cold, unsheened with sweat. Her mouth seemed to leave a brief ring of frost that steamed in the heavy night air. A new line appeared in her second sight, a fine thread of gray light, strung from him to her. It is a life-line. It could, she somehow knew, stretch to the ends of the earth without breaking. Oh.

  Moved, she completed the full formal rite, kissing the back of each hand, then bending to his feet and touching her lips to each boot as well. He jerked a little, as if to dissuade her, but then stood still and allowed the gesture. He recaptured her hands and helped pull her back to her feet. Her knees felt like water.

  “Surely,” he whispered in awe, “we are blessed.”

  “Yes. For we bless each other. Be at rest in your heart. It will be very well.”

  She backed away to let Illvin embrace his brother. Illvin held Arhys away by his shoulders, after, and gazed with smiling puzzlement into those strange exultant eyes, which seemed to look back from some great and receding distance. The cool lips smiled kindly, though. Illvin turned to give him a leg up on the painfully obedient red stallion, check his girths and stirrups and gear one last time, and slap his leather-clad leg in some habitual gesture. He stood away.

  Ista looked around through blurred and stinging eyes to find Liss, standing at the shoulder of Foix’s horse. Foix was already mounted. He saluted Liss in the gesture of the Daughter’s Order, touching his forehead. She returned a courier’s salute, fist tapped over her heart. Foix, meeting Ista’s eyes, saluted her as well; she gave back the sign of the fivefold blessing.

  The dozen men of Arhys’s forlorn little company mounted up at his quiet word. No one spoke much.