The Complete Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “No!” screamed Cattilara.

  “Very well.” Ista reached to open the ligature, one eye on the restive, mutinous demon.

  Cattilara turned her head away, and whispered, “Yes.”

  Ista paused, exhaled. Murmured, “So I pray the gods may hear even me, and let my whispered yes tower above my shouted no and mount all the way to their fivefold realm. As I would be heard, so I hear you.” She swallowed hard. “Hold your demon on its course. It will not be an easy one.”

  “Will I feel much pain?” asked Cattilara. Her eyes met Ista’s at last. Her voice would have been almost inaudible, but for the silence on the platform. Not even cloth rustled, from the people standing watching.

  Yes, no, I have no idea. “Yes, I think so. All births have some.”

  “Oh. Good.” She turned her head away again, but not in denial. Her eyes were wet, but her face was as still as carved ivory.

  Ista lifted her hand, but her intervention was not needed. As Cattilara’s face went slack, the white fire burst redoubled from her heart, to join the flow from Illvin in a torrent, roaring down over the parapet. So, you do not ride alone, Arhys. The hearts of the two who love you best go with you now. She hoped his body received their outpouring as an exaltation, at the other end of that white line.

  She rose and hurried to the parapet, motioning the others to make ready with pads, cloths, and tourniquets. She stared out into the darkness, the roads like gray ribbons, the open spaces rucked like mist-shrouded blankets across an unmade bed, the trees of the grove black and silent. A few watch fires burned in the enemy camp, and Jokonan horsemen slowly patrolled back and forth out of bowshot. A clot of moving shadows reached the trees, slipping between the patrols.

  She glared out with all the strength of her other eyes, following the white flood and thin gray thread to where a dozen soul-sparks moved, atop the lesser life-blurs of their horses. Arhys’s gray glow was distinctive, Foix’s violet-tinged double shadow even more so. She could see clearly through all the moving masses that lay between, when Arhys kicked the demon-lit shape of his horse into a canter. He closed rapidly on a quiescent, colored thread of sorcerer light, like a hawk swooping on unsuspecting prey.

  “Can you see Foix?” Liss’s breathless voice sounded by her ear.

  “Yes. He rides by Arhys’s side.”

  The shouts of alarm didn’t go up till the first tent went down. As more cries and a ring of steel split the night, the mounted patrols wheeled about and began galloping back toward the camp. Abruptly, the snake of sorcerer fire stretched and snapped. A bluish gout of soul-fire shot aloft, separating even as Ista watched from a violent purple streak, which sped away trailing soul shreds in torn-off, fluttering rags. The bluish gout writhed in agony, and faded into elsewhere. The purple streak grounded itself in a moving soul-spark somewhere beneath the trees; both the recipient and the demon dropped flat in the shock of that arrival. But the snake did not renew itself.

  “That’s one,” said Ista aloud.

  The attackers made no cries or calls at all, moving in grim, determined silence. The pale blur of another tent, sheltering the head of another colored snake, swayed, shook, and collapsed. The Jokonan sorcerer gathered energy for some strike at his attacker; Ista could see the flash of a bolt of demon magic pass through Arhys, and hear the wail of the sorcerer’s surprise and woe, cut off. She rather thought that faint, distant, liquid thunk might have been a beheading. Another violet streak separated from another white gout. Shocked and tumbling, the violet blur fell helter-skelter into a horse being ridden toward the fray by a Jokonan cavalryman. The animal stumbled, jerked sideways, dumped its rider, and wheeled to run at a hard gallop away down the Oby road. The loose snake head seemed to quest after it as if seeking to strike, but then fell back in on itself, disintegrating in a stream of sparks.

  “That’s two,” said Ista.

  From the trees a wavering glow blazed up, yellow and bright, as a tent caught fire. Beyond the grove, lights were being lit in the big green command tents. Ista had no doubt that those sorcerers asleep when the first blow fell were now astir, yanked awake by Joen if they’d slept through the noise. How quickly could the surprised Jokonans coordinate their defenses? Their counterattack? Another spurt of soul-fire, without a demon this time, seared past her eye. An ordinary enemy soldier slain, or one of Arhys’s defiant volunteers? From a god’s-eye view, she realized, it made no difference. All death-births were accepted equally into that realm.

  “Three,” she counted, as the attack pressed forward.

  “Are we winning?” gasped Liss.

  “It depends on what you think is the prize.”

  At the fourth tent the attackers began to come to grief at last. Three sorcerer snakes had somehow combined there. Possibly Arhys was weirdly invisible to them, for they chose to concentrate on Foix. Of course—they must imagine another sorcerer as the greatest danger to them, mistake Foix for the heart or head of the enemy strike. Soul-lights swayed, jerked, spun in Ista’s dizzied perceptions. The bear went down, roaring, under a net of fire. But the fourth and fifth snakes were beheaded, ribbon-bodies lashing furiously in their death throes before shredding apart in a streaming aurora. From that far green-glowing tent, Ista could hear a woman fiercely screaming, but the Roknari words were blurred to unintelligibility by distance and rage.

  “I think they have taken Foix,” said Ista.

  Behind her, a triple gasp. “Help!” cried the sewing woman. White-faced, Liss whirled and dropped back to her post by Cattilara’s side.

  On both Cattilara’s right thigh and on Illvin’s, long dark slices had opened up. A brief glimpse of the red-brown of pulsing muscle, a pale streak of tendon, then both the twin wounds were flooded with red. The sewing woman and Liss, and Goram and dy Cabon, hastened to pad and bind each cut and slow the stream.

  Yes. Yes, thought Ista. Her strategy was good. On one recipient, that sword cut would have gone to the core. The half wounds were half as dire. She almost laughed aloud, if blackly, imagining the dismay of Arhys’s assailant, knowing from the shock of contact, the jerk of blade from the bone, the ringing up his arm, how hard he’d struck, yet seeing that wound close up again before his eyes… Indeed, the wild wail that echoed up now from the grove might well be the very man. You thought you’d dropped all the horrors of nightmare down upon Porifors, while you sat safe. Now, watch Porifors return the favor. We hold, we hold.

  For a very little while longer.

  She turned again to try to peer beneath the trees. She could mark Arhys’s striding progress across the camp by the sounds of terror, she thought, as his enemies flew screaming before his pale face and deadly blade. And by the streams of white fire rising in his wake. He was unhorsed; she was uncertain when that had happened. She hoped he was not yet alone, without one comrade left to guard his back.

  I think he is alone now.

  A weird wet thunk sounded behind her. She glanced back to see her helpers rushing to press pads to Illvin’s and Cattilara’s stomachs. That was a crossbow bolt. She wondered if Arhys had plucked it out to throw back at his dazed enemies, or left it in place like a badge. It would have been a killing strike, on any other man, at any other time. Soon there will be more. By the gods, a dy Lutez does know how to die three times, and three times three if needed.

  She fell to her knees behind the parapet, clinging to the stone.

  It seemed to her that some great black glacier, some ice dam in her soul, was melting, as if a hundred summers’ heat had fallen on it in an hour. Cracking, coming apart. And that in the mile-deep, mile-long lake of icy green water backing it up, an expectant surge rippled from bank to bank, from the surface to the uttermost depths, troubling the waters. I passed blessing to you in the forecourt. But you passed blessing back to me, too. Trading rescues. Five gods watch us ride out together in this breaking dawn.

  You Five may awe us. But I think we must awe You, too.

  “Seven,” she whispered aloud.

  Then
something went wrong. A hesitation, a turning away. Too many, far too many, soul-sparks swirled around that gray flame. Now he is surrounded, cut off. Dozens who ran away now run toward, encouraged by their own numbers, daring to take him down.

  In the midst of your enemies, your Father has prepared a feast for you, on a table your father set long ago. Here it comes…

  Another thunk, and another. From behind her, Liss’s sharp voice cried, “Lady, there are too many wounds splitting open! You must stop this!”

  Dy Cabon’s strained rumble, “Royina, remember you promised Arhys that Lady Cattilara would live—!”

  And a certain fat white god has promised Illvin to me, if I did not mistake Him. If we both live. A god-given lover, importunate and bold as a scarred stray cat, rubbing past my guard into my good graces. If I can keep him fed.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Illvin’s body jerked upward with the transferred force of some massive blow to Arhys’s back, and Goram, his face frantic, rolled him over to reach the red rent. Cattilara’s white hand half split from its wrist, and Liss pounced to staunch the spurting.

  Now. Oh yes, now. Ista clenched her hand about the torrent of white fire running past her shoulder. The flow stopped abruptly. Wild shocks pulsed back in both directions from her grip. The violet channel shattered. The white fire, the constant companion of her inner eye for days, winked out.

  A hushed hesitation: then, in the shadowed grove, a grotesque roar of hysteria-tinged triumph went up from half a hundred Jokonan throats.

  The ice dam exploded. A wall of water towered, bent, and broke, thundering forward, bursting its banks, blasting her soul wide, wider, scouring and flushing a lifetime of stones, rubble, rotted and clotted trash before it. Boiling, roaring outward. Ista spread her arms wide, and opened her mouth, and let it go.

  The gray thread, almost lost to view in the violent blazes, stiffened to a taut rope. It began to move back through her new dilation, faster and faster, until it seemed to smoke with the heat of its passage, like an overstrained fiber rope about to char and burst into flame. For an instant, Arhys’s astonished, agonized, ecstatic soul moved through hers.

  Yes. We are all, every living one of us, doorways between the two realms, that of matter that gives us birth, and that of spirit into which we are born in death. Arhys was sundered from his own gate, and lost the way back to it forever. So it was given to me to lend him mine, for a little time. But so great a soul does need a wide portal; so knock down my gates and breach my walls and burst them wide, and pour through freely, by my leave. And farewell. “Yes,” Ista whispered. “Yes.”

  He did not look back. Given what he must be looking on toward, Ista was not in the least surprised.

  It is done, Sire. I hope You find it was done well.

  She heard no voice, saw no radiant figure. But it seemed to her she felt a caress upon her brow, and the ache there, which had throbbed for hours as though her head were bound in a tight iron band, stopped. The end of the pain was like a morning birdsong.

  There was a real morning birdsong, she realized muzzily, here in matter’s lovely realm, a cheery, brainless warble from the bushes below the castle walls. The gray cloud-feathers among the fading stars were just beginning to blush a faint, fiery pink, color creeping from east to west. A little thread of lemon light lined the eastern horizon.

  Illvin groaned. Ista turned to find him sitting up in dy Cabon’s grip, pulling blood-soaked bandages from his unmarked body. His lips parted with dismay as he took in the extent of the mess, starting to glow scarlet as color seeped back into the world. “Five gods.” He swallowed against a surge of bile. “That was bad, at the end. Wasn’t it.” It was no question.

  “Yes,” said Ista. “But he’s gone, now. Safe and gone.” In the grove below, the fear-crazed Jokonans, she somehow knew, were hacking Arhys’s body to bits, pulling it apart, terrified that it might yet reassemble and rise once more against them. She did not see any merit in mentioning this to Illvin just now.

  Cattilara lay on her side, curled up. She cried in quiet, stuttering sobs, almost unable to breathe, clutching the sponge that had stanched her stomach so hard that the blood bubbled through her fingers. The sewing woman patted her clumsily and uselessly on the shoulder.

  The world darkened around Ista, as if dawn, appalled by the scene, retreated again over the horizon. Strolling into in her mind like some casual wayfarer, a Voice spoke: familiar, ironic, and immense.

  My Word. Spacious in here all of a sudden, is it not?

  “What are You doing here now? I thought this was become your Step-father’s battlefield.”

  You invited Me. Come, come, you can’t deny it: I heard you whispering over in that corner.

  She was not sure she had any emotions left for this. Not rage, in any case. Her disembodied quietude might be either serenity or shock. But the Bastard was surely a god to be approached with caution. “Why do you not appear in front of me?”

  Because I am behind you, now. The Voice grew warm and amused. The press of an enormous belly seemed to heat her back, along with an obscene implication of loins against her buttocks, and a pressure of wide hands upon her shoulders.

  “You have a vile sense of humor,” she said weakly.

  Yes, and you catch every one of My jokes, too. I love a woman with a keen ear. He seemed to breathe into hers. You should have a keen tongue to go with them, I vow.

  Her mouth filled with fire.

  “Why am I here?”

  To complete Arhys’s victory. If you can.

  The Voice was gone. The darkness faded into a streaked pale dawnlight. She found herself fallen on her knees on the tower platform, leaning into Illvin’s alarmed grip.

  “Ista? Ista!” he was saying into her ear. “Royina, dear, don’t frighten a poor naked cavalier. Speak to me, yes?”

  She blinked open blurry eyes. He was only a nearly naked cavalier, she discovered to her disappointment. The bloodstained rags of his linen trousers were still rucked up around his loins. He was a most magnificent mess otherwise, true, dark matted hair falling in a wild tangle over his face and shoulders, sweaty and soot-smeared and smelly and striped with red. But all his scars were old ones, healed and pale. He huffed with relief when he saw her looking back at him and bent his neck to kiss her. She fended off his lips with her palm. “Wait, not yet.”

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Did you hear anything? Or see anyone?”

  “No, but I’ll swear you did.”

  “What, would you not swear instead that I am mad?”

  “No.”

  “And yet you see no god lights, hear no voices. How do you know?”

  “I saw my brother’s face when you blessed him. And yours when he blessed you. If that is madness, I would run down the road after it dressed as I am, and barefoot.”

  “I will walk slowly.”

  “…Good.”

  He helped her to her feet.

  Liss said anxiously, “Royina, what of Foix?”

  Ista sighed. “Foix went down beneath many soldiers and sorcerers. I did not see his soul arise, nor his demon flee. I fear he is taken, perhaps wounded as well.”

  “That’s…not good,” said dy Cabon, still kneeling by Illvin’s pallet. His teeth grated in a little, nervous gesture. “Do you think…do you think Joen can bind him into her array?”

  “I think yes, given time. What I do not know is how long he can resist her.” Five gods, I do not wish to lose another boy.

  “Not good at all,” Illvin agreed.

  He had barely exhaled, steadying himself upright, when a shout rang out, Goram’s voice: “Lady Catti! No!”

  Ista twisted around. Cattilara was on her feet, her bloody robe falling wide about her. Her eyes were huge, her mouth open. The demon light within her had expanded to the margins of her body, and pulsed violently.

  “The demon is ascendant!” Ista cried. “It is taking her. Seize her, do not let her run!”

  Goram, closest,
attempted to take her arm. A violet light appeared in her palm, and she shoved it toward him. He fell, retching. Ista staggered toward her, stepping between her and the opening of the stairs. Cattilara started forward, then shied away, her hands raised as if to shield her eyes. She looked around frantically. Her knees bunched, and she lunged for the wall.

  Liss sprang forward and grabbed her ankle. She twisted, snarling, and yanked at Liss’s hair. Illvin danced forward, hesitated for an instant of calculation, and clipped her precisely across the side of the head. She flipped backward, half-stunned.

  Ista tottered over and fell to her knees beside her. She seemed to see the demon like a tumor spreading tendrils throughout Cattilara’s body. Winding like a parasitical vine around the tree of her spirit, sapping strength, and life, and light. Stealing the high complexities of personality, language, knowledge, and memory that it could not, in the fundamental disorder of its nature, ever make for itself.

  Oh. Now I see how to do this.

  She reached out with her spirit hands and lifted the demon, trailing recoiling tendrils, from Cattilara’s soul. It came unwillingly, flopping in panic like some sea creature drawn out of the water. Ista held out a material hand, fingers spread for a screen, and pushed back the trailing shreds of Cattilara’s soul, like carding wool, until only the demon was left in her hand. She held it up dubiously before her face.

  Yes, said the Voice. That’s right. Go ahead.

  She shrugged, popped the demon in her mouth, and swallowed it.

  “Now what? Are You going to extend this metaphor to its logical conclusion? It would be just like You, I think.”

  I shall spare you that, sweet Ista, said the Voice, highly amused. But I do like your vile sense of humor. I think we shall get along well, don’t you?

  There was no cranny in her armored spirit for the demon to wedge itself within, to clutch, to hold; and it wasn’t only that she was filled by the god. She felt the demon, knotted up in terror, pass out the other side of her soul. Into the realm of the spirit. Into the hands of the god its Master. Gone.