Betriz’s was among them. “Cazaril,” she said anxiously, crowding back under his arm to hiss in his ear, “what does it mean? The Bastard always takes the leftovers. Always. It is His, His…it’s His job. He can’t not take a severed soul—I thought He already had.”
Cazaril was stunned, too. “If no god has taken up Lord Dondo’s soul…then it’s still in the world. I mean, if it’s not there, then it has to be here. Somewhere…” An unquiet ghost, a revenant spirit. Sundered and damned.
The ceremonies stopped dead as the archdivine and Chancellor dy Jironal retreated around the hearth for a low-voiced conversation, or possibly argument, from the rise and chop of swallowed words that drifted back to the curious crowd waiting. The archdivine popped around the hearth to call an acolyte of the Bastard to him; after a whispered conference, the white-garbed young man departed at a run. The gray sky overhead was darkening. A subdivine, in a burst of initiative, struck up an unscheduled hymn from the robed singers to cover the gap. By the time they’d finished, dy Jironal and Mendenal had returned.
Still they waited. The singers embarked on another hymn. Cazaril found himself wishing he’d used Ordol’s Fivefold Pathway for something other than a prop to cover his naps; alas, the book was still back in Valenda. If Dondo’s spirit had not been taken by the servant-demon back to its master, where was it? And if the demon could not return except with both its soul-buckets filled, where was the sundered soul of Dondo’s unknown murderer now? For that matter, where was the demon? Cazaril had never read much theology. For some reason now obscure to him, he’d thought it an impractical study, suited only to unworldly dreamers. Till he’d waked to this nightmare.
A scritching noise from his boot made him look down. The sacred white rat was stretching itself up his leg, its pink nose quivering. It rubbed its little pointed face rapidly against Cazaril’s shin. He bent and picked it up, meaning to return it to its handler. It writhed ecstatically in his cupped hands, and licked his thumb.
To Cazaril’s surprise, the wheezing acolyte returned to the temple courtyard leading the groom Umegat, dressed as usual in the tabard of the Zangre. But it was Umegat who stunned him.
The Roknari shone with a white aura like a man standing in front of a clear glass window at a sea dawn. Cazaril shut his eyes, though he knew he didn’t see this with his eyes. The white blaze still moved behind his lids. Over there, a darkness that wasn’t darkness, and two more, and an unrestful aurora, and off to the side, a faint green spark. His eyes sprang open. Umegat stared straight at him for the fraction of a second, and Cazaril felt flensed. The roya’s groom moved on, to present himself with a diffident bow to the archdivine, and step aside for some whispered conference.
The archdivine called the Bastard’s acolyte to him, who had recaptured one of her charges; she gave up the rat to Umegat, who cradled it in one arm and glanced toward Cazaril. The Roknari groom trod over to him, humbly excusing himself through the crowd of courtiers, who barely glanced at him. Cazaril could not understand why they did not open before that bow wave of his white aura like the sea before a spinnaker-driven ship. Umegat held out his open hand. Cazaril blinked down stupidly at it.
“The sacred rat, my lord?” prompted Umegat gently.
“Oh.” The creature was still sucking on his fingers, tickling them. Umegat pulled the reluctant animal off Cazaril’s sleeve as though removing a burr and just prevented its mate from springing across to take its place. Juggling rats, he walked quietly back to the bier, where the archdivine waited. Was Cazaril losing his mind—don’t answer that—or did Mendenal barely keep himself from bowing to the groom? The Zangre’s courtiers seemed to see nothing unreasonable in the archdivine calling in the roya’s most expert animal-handler in this awkward crisis. All eyes were locked on the rats, not on the Roknari. The unreason was all Cazaril’s.
Umegat held the creatures in his arms and whispered to them, and approached Dondo’s body. A long moment, while the rats, though quiescent, made no move to claim Dondo for their god. At last Umegat backed away, and shook his head apologetically to the archdivine, and gave up the rats to their anxious young woman.
Mendenal prostrated himself between the hearth and the bier for a moment of abject prayer, but rose again soon. Dedicats were bringing out tapers to light the wall lanterns around the darkening courtyard. The archdivine called forth the pallbearers to take up the bier to Dondo’s waiting pyre, and the singers filed out in procession.
Iselle returned to Betriz and Cazaril. She rubbed the back of her hand across eyes rimmed with dark circles. “I don’t think I can bear any more of this. Dy Jironal can see to his brother’s roasting. Take me home, Lord Caz.”
The royesse’s little party split off from the main body of mourners, not the only wearied persons to do so, and exited through the front portico into the damp dusk of the autumn day.
The groom Umegat, waiting with his shoulders propped against a pillar, shoved himself upright, came toward them, and bowed. “My lord dy Cazaril. Might I have a brief word?”
It almost surprised Cazaril that the aura did not reflect off the wet pavement at his feet. He gave Iselle an apologetic salute and went aside with the Roknari. The three women waited at the edge of the portico, Iselle leaning on Betriz’s arm.
“My lord, at your earliest convenience, I beg that I might have some private audience with you.”
“I’ll come to you at the menagerie as soon as I have Iselle settled.” Cazaril hesitated. “Do you know that you are lit like a burning torch?”
The groom inclined his head. “So I have been told, my lord, by the few with eyes to see. One can never see oneself, alas. No mundane mirror reflects this. Only the eyes of a soul.”
“There was a woman inside who glowed like a green candle.”
“Mother Clara? Yes, she just spoke to me of you. She is a most excellent midwife.”
“What is that, that anti-light, then?” Cazaril glanced toward where the women lingered.
Umegat touched his lips. “Not here, if you please, my lord.”
Cazaril’s mouth formed a silent Oh. He nodded.
The Roknari swept him a lower bow. As he turned to pad quietly into the gathering gloom, he added over his shoulder, “You are lit like a burning city.”
13
The royesse was so drained by the ordeal of Lord Dondo’s odd funeral that she was stumbling by the time they had climbed to the castle again. Cazaril left Nan and Betriz making sensible plans to put Iselle straight to bed and have the servants bring a plain dinner to their chambers. He made his way back out of the main block to the Zangre’s gates. Pausing, he glanced out over the city to see if a column of smoke was still rising from the temple. He fancied he saw a faint orange reflection on the lowering clouds, but it was too dark by now to make out anything more.
His heart leapt in shock at the sudden flapping around him as he crossed the stable yard, but it was only Fonsa’s crows, mobbing him again. He fended off two that attempted to land on his shoulder, and tried to wave them away, hissing and stamping. They hopped back out of reach, but would not leave, following him, conspicuously, all the way to the menagerie.
One of Umegat’s undergrooms was waiting by the wall lanterns bracketing the aisle door. He was a little, elderly, thumbless man, who gave Cazaril a wide smile that showed a truncated tongue, accounting for a welcome that was a kind of mouthed hum, the meaning made clear by his friendly gestures. He slid the broad door back just enough to admit Cazaril before him, and shooed away the crows who tried to follow, scooping the most persistent one back out the gap with a flip of his foot before closing it.
The groom’s candlestick, shielded by a blown-glass tulip, had a thick handle made for him to wrap his fingers around. By this light he guided Cazaril down the menagerie’s aisle. The animals in their stalls snuffled and thumped as Cazaril passed, pressing to the bars to stare at him from the shadows. The leopard’s eyes shone like green sparks; its ratcheting growl echoed off the walls, not low and
hostile, but pulsing in a weirdly inquiring singsong.
The menagerie’s grooms had their sleeping quarters on half the building’s upper floor, the other half being devoted to the storage of fodder and straw. A door stood open, candlelight spilling from it into the dark corridor. The undergroom knocked on the frame; Umegat’s voice responded, “Good. Thank you.”
The undergroom gave way with a bow. Cazaril ducked through the door to see a narrow but private chamber with a window looking out over the dark stable yard. Umegat pulled the curtain across the window and bustled around a rude pine table that held a brightly patterned cloth, a wine jug and clay cups, and a plate with bread and cheese. “Thank you for coming, Lord Cazaril. Enter, please, seat yourself. Thank you, Daris, that will be all.” Umegat closed the door. Cazaril paused on the way to the chair Umegat’s gesture had indicated to stare at a tall shelf crammed with books, including titles in Ibran, Darthacan, and Roknari. A bit of gold lettering on a familiar-looking spine on the top shelf caught his eye, The Fivefold Pathway of the Soul. Ordol. The leather binding was worn with use, the volume, and most of its company, free of dust. Theology, mostly. Why am I not surprised?
Cazaril lowered himself onto the plain wooden chair. Umegat turned up a cup and poured a heavy red wine into it, smiled briefly, and held it out to his guest. Cazaril closed his shaking hands around it with vast gratitude. “Thank you. I need that.”
“I should imagine so, my lord.” Umegat poured a cup for himself and sat across the table from Cazaril. The table might be plain and poor, but the generous braces of wax candles upon it gave a rich, clear light. A reading man’s light.
Cazaril raised the cup to his lips and gulped. When he set it down, Umegat immediately topped it up again. Cazaril closed his eyes and opened them. Open or shut, Umegat still glowed.
“You are an acolyte—no. You’re a divine. Aren’t you,” said Cazaril.
Umegat cleared his throat apologetically. “Yes. Of the Bastard’s Order. Although that is not why I am here.”
“Why are you here?”
“We’ll come to that.” Umegat bent forward, picked up the waiting knife, and began to saw off hunks of bread and cheese.
“I thought—I hoped—I wondered—if you might have been sent by the gods. To guide and guard me.”
Umegat’s lip quirked up. “Indeed? And here I was wondering if you had been sent by the gods to guide and guard me.”
“Oh. That’s…not so good, then.” Cazaril shrank a little in his seat, and took another gulp of wine. “Since when?”
“Since the day in the menagerie that Fonsa’s crow practically jumped up and down on your head crying This one! This one! My chosen god is, dare I say it, fiendishly ambiguous at times, but that was a little hard to miss.”
“Was I glowing, then?”
“No.”
“When did I start, um, doing that?”
“Sometime between the last time I saw you, which was late yesterday afternoon when you came back to the Zangre limping as though you’d been thrown from a horse, and today at the temple. I believe you may have a better guess than I do as to the exact time. Will you not take a little food, my lord? You don’t look well.”
Cazaril had eaten nothing since Betriz had brought him the milk sops at noon. Umegat waited until his guest’s mouth was full of cheese and chewy crust before remarking, “One of my varied tasks as a young divine, before I came to Cardegoss, was as an assistant Inquirer for the Temple investigating alleged charges of death magic.” Cazaril choked; Umegat went on serenely, “Or death miracle, to put it with more theological accuracy. We uncovered quite a number of ingenious fakes—usually poison, though the, ah, dimmer murderers sometimes tried cruder methods. I had to explain to them that the Bastard does not ever execute unrepentant sinners with a dirk, nor a large hammer. The true miracles were much more rare than their notoriety would suggest. But I never encountered an authentic case where the victim was an innocent. To put it more finely still, what the Bastard granted was miracles of justice.” His voice had grown crisper, more decisive, the servility evaporating out of it along with most of his soft Roknari accent.
“Ah,” Cazaril mumbled, and took another gulp of wine. This is the most wit-full man I have met in Cardegoss, and I’ve spent the last three months looking past him because he wears a servant’s garb. Granted, Umegat apparently did not wish to draw attention to himself. “That tabard is as good as a cloak of invisibility, you know.”
Umegat smiled, and took a sip of his wine. “Yes.”
“So…are you an Inquirer now?” Was it all over? Would he be charged, convicted, executed for his murderous, if vain, attempt on Dondo?
“No. Not anymore.”
“What are you, then?”
To Cazaril’s bewilderment, Umegat’s eyes crinkled with laughter. “I’m a saint.”
Cazaril stared at him for a long, long moment, then drained his cup. Amiably, Umegat refilled it. Cazaril was certain of very little tonight, but somehow, he didn’t think Umegat was mad. Or lying.
“A saint. Of the Bastard.”
Umegat nodded.
“That’s…an unusual line of work, for a Roknari. How did it come about?” This was inane, but with two cups of wine on an empty stomach, he was growing light-headed.
Umegat’s smile grew sadly introspective. “For you—the truth. I suppose the names no longer matter. This was a lifetime ago. When I was a young lord in the Archipelago, I fell in love.”
“Young lords and young louts do that everywhere.”
“My lover was about thirty then. A man of keen mind and kind heart.”
“Oh. Not in the Archipelago, you don’t.”
“Indeed. I had no interest in religion whatsoever. For obvious reasons, he was a secret Quintarian. We made plans to flee together. I reached the ship to Brajar. He did not. I spent the voyage seasick and desperate, learning—I thought—to pray. Hoping he’d made it to another vessel, and we’d meet in the port city we’d chosen for our destination. It was over a year before I found out how he’d met his end, from a Roknari merchant trading there whom we had once both known.”
Cazaril took a drink. “The usual?”
“Oh, yes. Genitals, thumbs—that he might not sign the fifth god—” Umegat touched forehead, navel, groin, and heart, folding his thumb beneath his palm in the Quadrene fashion, denying the fifth finger that was the Bastard’s—“they saved his tongue for last, that he might betray others. He never did. He died a martyr, hanged.”
Cazaril touched forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, fingers spread wide. “I’m sorry.”
Umegat nodded. “I thought about it for a time. At least, those times when I wasn’t drunk or vomiting or being stupid, eh? Youth, eh. It didn’t come easily. Finally, one day, I walked to the temple and turned myself in.” He took a breath. “And the Bastard’s Order took me in. Gave a home to the homeless, friends to the friendless, honor to the despised. And they gave me work. I was…charmed.”
A Temple divine. Umegat was leaving out a few details, Cazaril felt. Forty years or so of them. But there was nothing inexplicable about an intelligent, energetic, dedicated man rising through the Temple hierarchy to such a rank. It was the part about shining like a full moon over a snowfall that was making his head reel. “Good. Wonderful. Great works. Foundling hospitals and, um, inquiries. Now explain why you glow in the dark.” He had either drunk too much, or not nearly enough, he decided glumly.
Umegat rubbed his neck and pulled gently on his queue. “Do you understand what it means to be a saint?”
Cazaril cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You must be very virtuous, I suppose.”
“No, in fact. One need not be good. Or even nice.” Umegat looked wry of a sudden. “Grant you, once one experiences…what one experiences, one’s tastes change. Material ambition seems immaterial. Greed, pride, vanity, wrath, just grow too dull to bother with.”
“Lust?”
Umegat brightened. “Lust, I’m happy to sa
y, seems largely unaffected. Or perhaps I might grant, love. For the cruelty and selfishness that make lust vile become tedious. But personally, I think it is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one’s god.” Umegat emptied his cup. “The gods love their great-souled men and women as an artist loves fine marble, but the issue isn’t virtue. It is will. Which is chisel and hammer. Has anyone ever quoted you Ordol’s classic sermon of the cups?”
“That thing where the divine pours water all over everything? I first heard it when I was ten. I thought it was pretty entertaining when he got his shoes wet, but then, I was ten. I’m afraid our Temple divine at Cazaril tended to drone on.”
“Attend now, and you shall not be bored.” Umegat inverted his clay cup upon the cloth. “Men’s will is free. The gods may not invade it, any more than I may pour wine into this cup through its bottom.”
“No, don’t waste the wine!” Cazaril protested, as Umegat reached for the jug. “I’ve seen it demonstrated before.”
Umegat grinned, and desisted. “But have you really understood how powerless the gods are, when the lowest slave may exclude them from his heart? And if from his heart, then from the world as well, for the gods may not reach in except through living souls. If the gods could seize passage from anyone they wished, then men would be mere puppets. Only if they borrow or are given will from a willing creature, do they have a little channel through which to act. They can seep in through the minds of animals, sometimes, with effort. Plants…require much foresight. Or”—Umegat turned his cup upright again, and lifted the jug—“sometimes, a man may open himself to them, and let them pour through him into the world.” He filled his cup. “A saint is not a virtuous soul, but an empty one. He—or she—freely gives the gift of their will to their god. And in renouncing action, makes action possible.” He lifted his cup to his lips, stared disquietingly at Cazaril over the rim, and drank. He added, “Your divine should not have used water. It just doesn’t hold the attention properly. Wine. Or blood, in a pinch. Some liquid that matters.”
The Curse of Chalion Page 23
