The Curse of Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Cazaril wrapped his arms around his belly. “Oh.” His mind tried to gallop in three directions at once. So what was the fate of those souls the gods did accept? And just what exactly was happening to the enraged spirit so miraculously and hideously lodged in him? And…the Dowager Royina Ista’s words came back to him. The Zangre is haunted, you know. Not metaphor or madness after all, it appeared, but simple observation. How much else, then, of the eerie things she’d said might be not derangement, but plain truth—seen with altered eyes?

  He glanced up to find Umegat regarding him thoughtfully. The Roknari inquired politely, “And how are you feeling today?”

  “Better this afternoon than this morning.” He added a little reluctantly, “Better than yesterday.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Not yet. Later, perhaps.” He rubbed a hand over his beard. “What’s happening out there?”

  Umegat sat back and shrugged. “Chancellor dy Jironal, finding no candidates in the city, has ridden out of Cardegoss in search of the corpse of his brother’s murderer and any confederates left alive.”

  “I trust he will not seize some innocent in error.”

  “An experienced Inquirer from the Temple rides with him, which should suffice to prevent such mistakes.”

  Cazaril digested this. After a moment, Umegat added, “Also, a faction in the military order of the Daughter’s house has sent couriers riding out to all its lord dedicats, calling them to a general council. They mean not to allow Roya Orico to foist another commander like Lord Dondo onto them.”

  “How should they defy him? Revolt?”

  Umegat hastily waved away this treasonable suggestion. “Certainly not. Petition. Request.”

  “Mm. But I thought they protested last time, to no avail. Dy Jironal will not be wanting to let control of that order slip from his hands.”

  “The military order is backed by the whole of its house, this time.”

  “And, ah…what have you been doing today?”

  “Praying for guidance.”

  “And did you get an answer?”

  Umegat smiled ambiguously at him. “Perhaps.”

  Cazaril considered for a moment how best to phrase his next remark. “Interesting gossip you’re privy to. I take it, then, that it would now be redundant for me to go down to the temple and confess to Archdivine Mendenal for Dondo’s murder?”

  Umegat’s brows went up. “I suppose,” he said after a moment, “that it should not surprise me that the Lady of Spring has chosen a sharp-edged tool.”

  “You are a divine, a trained Inquirer. I didn’t imagine you could, or would, evade your oaths and disciplines. You immobilized me to give yourself time to report, and confer.” Cazaril hesitated. “That I am not presently under arrest should tell me…something about that conference, but I’m not at all sure what.”

  Umegat studied his hands, spread on his knees. “As a divine, I defer to my superiors. As a saint, I answer to my god. Alone. If He trusts my judgment, so perforce must I. And so must my superiors.” He looked up, and now his gaze was unsettlingly direct. “That the goddess has set your feet on some journey on her behalf—courier—is abundantly plain from Her hour-by-hour preservation of your life. The Temple is at…not your service, but Hers. I think I can promise you, none shall interfere with you.”

  Cazaril was stung into a wail. “But what am I supposed to be doing?”

  Umegat’s voice grew almost apologetic. “Speaking just from my own experience, I would surmise—your daily duties as they come to you.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  “Yes. I know.” Umegat’s lips twitched in a dry humor. “So the gods humble the would-be wise, I think.” He added after a moment, “Speaking of daily duties, I must return now to mine. Orico is unwell today. Feel free to visit the menagerie anytime you are so moved, my lord dy Cazaril.”

  “Wait—” Cazaril held out a hand as Umegat rose. “Can you tell me—does Orico know of the miracle of the menagerie? Does he understand—does he even know he is accursed? I’ll swear Iselle knows naught of it, nor Teidez.” Royina Ista, on the other hand… “Or does the roya just know he feels better for contact with his animals?”

  Umegat gave a little nod. “Orico knows. His father Ias told him, on his deathbed. The Temple has made many secret trials to break this curse. The menagerie is the only one that has seemed to do any good.”

  “And what of the Dowager Royina Ista? Is she shadowed like Sara?”

  Umegat tugged his queue and frowned thoughtfully. “I could better guess if I’d ever met her face-to-face. The dy Baocia family removed her from Cardegoss shortly before I was brought here.”

  “Does Chancellor dy Jironal know?”

  The frown deepened. “If he does, it was not from my lips. I have often cautioned Orico not to discuss his miracle, but…”

  “If Orico has kept something from dy Jironal, it would be a first.”

  Umegat shrugged acknowledgment, but added, “Given the early disasters in his reign, Orico believes that any action he dares take will redound to the detriment of Chalion. The chancellor is the tongs by which the roya attempts to handle all matters of state without spilling his bane thereupon.”

  “Some might wonder if dy Jironal is the answer to the curse, or part of it.”

  “The proxy seemed to work at first.”

  “And lately?”

  “Lately—we’ve redoubled our petitions to the gods for aid.”

  “And how have the gods answered?”

  “It would seem—by sending you.”

  Cazaril sat up in renewed terror, clutching his bedclothes. “No one sent me! I came by chance.”

  “I’d like an accounting of those chances, someday soon. When you will, my lord.” Umegat, with a deeply hopeful gaze that frightened Cazaril quite as much as any of his saintly remarks, bowed himself out.

  AFTER A FEW MORE HOURS SPENT COWERING UNDER his quilts, Cazaril decided that unless a man could dither himself to death, he wasn’t going to die this afternoon. Or if he was, there was nothing he could do about it. And his stomach was growling in a decidedly unsupernatural fashion. As the chill autumn light faded he crept out of bed, stretched his aching muscles, dressed himself, and went down to dinner.

  The Zangre was extremely subdued. With the court plunged into deep mourning, no fêtes or music were offered tonight. Cazaril found the banqueting hall thin of company; neither Iselle’s household nor Teidez’s were present, Royina Sara absented herself, and Roya Orico, his dark shadow clinging about him, ate hastily and departed immediately thereafter.

  The reason for Teidez’s absence, Cazaril soon learned, was that Chancellor dy Jironal had taken the royse with him when he rode out on his mission of investigation. Cazaril blinked and fell silent at this news. Surely dy Jironal could not be attempting to continue the seduction by corruption his brother had taken so well in hand? Downright austere by comparison to Dondo, he had not the taste or style for such puerile pleasures. It was impossible to imagine him roistering with a juvenile. Was it too much to hope he might be reversing his strategy for ascendancy over Teidez’s mind, taking the boy up after a true fatherly manner, apprenticing him to statecraft? The young royse was half-sick with idleness as well as dissolution; almost any exposure to men’s work must be medicine for him. More probably, Cazaril thought wearily, the chancellor simply dared not let his future handle upon Chalion out of his grip for an instant.

  Lord dy Rinal, seated across from Cazaril, twisted his lips at the half-empty hall and remarked, “Everyone’s deserting. Off to their country estates, if they have ’em, before the snow flies. It’s going to be a gloomy Father’s Day celebration, I warrant. Only the tailors and seamstresses are busy, furbishing up mourning garb.”

  Cazaril reached through the ghost-smudge that was hovering next to his plate and washed down the last bite of his repast with a gulp of well-watered wine. Four or five of the revenants had trailed after him to the hall and now clustered abo
ut him like cold children crowding a hearth. He had chosen somber clothing himself tonight, automatically; he wondered if he should trouble himself to obtain the full correct lavenders and blacks such as dy Rinal, always fashionable, now sported. Would the abomination locked in his belly take it as hypocrisy, or as a gesture of respect? Would it even know? New-riven from its body, how much of its repulsive nature did Dondo’s soul now retain? These weathered old spirits seemed to watch him from the outside; was Dondo watching him from the inside? He grinned briefly, as an alternative to startling poor dy Rinal with a fit of screaming. He managed a politely inquiring, “Do you stay or go?”

  “I go, I think. I’ll ride down with Marchess dy Heron as far as Heron itself, and then cut over the lower passes to home. The old lady might be glad enough of another sword in her party that she’d even invite me to stay.” He took a swallow of wine and lowered his voice. “If not even the Bastard would take Lord Dondo off our hands, you realize he must still be about somewhere. One trusts he’ll just haunt Jironal’s palace where he died, but really, he could be anywhere in Cardegoss. And he was vicious enough before he was murdered; he’s bound to be vengeful now. Slain the night before his wedding, gods!”

  Cazaril made a neutral noise.

  “The chancellor seems set on calling it death magic, but I shouldn’t wonder if it was poison after all. No way of telling, now the body’s burned, I suppose. Convenient for somebody, that.”

  “But he was surrounded by his friends. Surely no one could have administered—were you there?”

  Dy Rinal grimaced. “After Lady Pig? No. Thanks be to all her squeals, I was not present at that butchering.” Dy Rinal glanced around, as if afraid a ghost with a grudge might be sneaking up on him even now. That there were half a dozen within his arm’s reach was evidently not apparent to him. Cazaril brushed one away from his face, trying not to let his eyes focus on what, to his companion, must seem empty air.

  Ser dy Maroc, the roya’s wardrobe-master, strolled up to their table saying, “Dy Rinal! Have you heard the news from Ibra?” Belatedly, he observed Cazaril leaning with elbows on the board opposite and hesitated, flushing slightly.

  Cazaril smiled sourly. “One trusts you’re getting your gossip from Ibra from more reliable sources these days, Maroc?”

  Dy Maroc stiffened. “If the Chancellery’s own courier be one, yes. He came in pell-mell while my head tailor was refitting Orico’s mourning garb, that he had to let out by four fingerbreadths—anyway, it’s official. The Heir of Ibra died last week, all suddenly, of the coughing fever in South Ibra. His faction has collapsed, and rushes to make treaty with the old Fox, or save their lives by sacrificing each other. The war in South Ibra is ended.”

  “Well!” Dy Rinal sat up and stroked his beard. “Do we call that good news, or bad? Good for poor Ibra, the gods know. But our Orico has chosen the losing side again.”

  Dy Maroc nodded. “The Fox is rumored to be most wroth with Chalion, for stirring the pot and keeping it boiling, not that the Heir needed help putting wood on that fire.”

  “Perhaps the old roya’s taste for strife shall be buried with his firstborn,” said Cazaril, not too hopefully.

  “So the Fox has a new Heir, that child of his age—what was the boy’s name?” said dy Rinal.

  “Royse Bergon,” Cazaril supplied.

  “Aye,” said dy Maroc. “A young one indeed. And the Fox could drop at any moment, leaving an untried boy on the throne.”

  “Not so untried as all that,” said Cazaril. “He’s seen the prosecution of one siege and the breaking of another, riding in his late mother’s train, and survived a civil war. And one would think a son of the Fox could not be stupid.”

  “The first one was,” said dy Rinal, unassailably. “To leave his supporters in such naked disarray.”

  “One cannot blame death of the coughing fever on a lack of wit,” said Cazaril.

  “Assuming it really was the coughing fever,” said dy Rinal, pursing his lips in new suspicion.

  “What, d’you think the Fox would poison his own son?” said dy Maroc.

  “His agents, man.”

  “Well, then, he might have done it sooner, and saved Ibra a world of woe—”

  Cazaril smiled thinly, and pushed up from the table, leaving dy Rinal and dy Maroc to their tale-spinning. His wine-sickness was past, and he felt better for his dinner, but the shaky exhaustion that remained was not anything he was accustomed to calling well. In the absence of any summons from the royesse, he made his way back to his bed.

  Wearied beyond fear, he fell asleep soon enough. But around midnight, he was brought awake with a gasp. A man’s screams echoed distantly in his head. Screams, and broken weeping, and choked howls of rage—he bolted upright, heart pounding, turning his head to locate the sound. Faint and strange—might it be coming from across the ravine from the Zangre, or down by the river below his window? No one from the castle seemed to respond, no footsteps, or cries of inquiry from the guards…In another few moments, Cazaril realized he was not hearing the tormented howls with his ears, any more than he saw the pale smudges floating around his bed with his eyes. And he recognized the voice.

  He lay back down, panting and curled around himself, and endured the uproar for another ten minutes. Was the damned soul of Dondo preparing to break free of the Lady’s miracle and haul him off to hell? He was about to leave his bed and run to the menagerie, all in his nightdress, pound on the doors and wake up Umegat and beg the saint for help—could Umegat do anything about this?—when the cries faded again.

  It was about the hour of Dondo’s death, he realized. Perhaps the spirit took up some special powers at this time? He couldn’t tell if it had or had not done so last night, he’d been so sodden drunk. One uneasy nightmare had blended in mad fragments with all the others.

  It might have been worse, he told himself as his heart gradually slowed again. Dondo might have been given an articulate voice. The thought of Dondo’s ghost made nightly free to speak to him, whether in rage or abuse or vile suggestion, broke his courage as the plain howls had not, and he wept for a little in the sheer terror of the imagining.

  Trust the Lady. Trust the Lady. He whispered some incoherent prayers, and slowly regained control of himself. If She had brought him this far for some purpose, surely She would not abandon him now.

  A new horrible thought occurred to him, as he told Umegat’s sermon over in his mind. If the goddess only entered the world by Cazaril renouncing his will on Her behalf, could wanting desperately to live, an act of will if ever there was one, be enough to exclude Her, and Her miracle? Her protective encapsulation might pop like a soap bubble, releasing a paradox of death and damnation…Following this logic loop around and around was enough to keep him awake for hours, as the night slowly wore itself out. The square of his chamber’s window was growing faintly gray before he dropped again into blessed unconsciousness.

  SO IT WAS THAT, FLANKED BY HIS GHOSTLY OUTRIDERS, he climbed the stairs late the following morning to his office antechamber. He felt stupid and eroded from lack of sleep, and he looked forward without enthusiasm to a week’s worth of neglected correspondence and bookkeeping, dropped in disordered piles on his desk from the hour of Iselle’s disastrous betrothal.

  He found his ladies up betimes. In the sitting room just past the frontier of his office, all his good new schoolroom maps were spread out on a table. Iselle leaned on her hands, staring down at them. Betriz, her arms folded under her breasts, stood watching over her shoulder and frowning. Both young women, and Nan dy Vrit, who sat sewing, wore the blacks and lavenders of strict formal court mourning, a prudent dissimulation of which Cazaril approved.

  As he entered, he saw next to Iselle’s hand a scattering of paper scraps with scribbled lists, some items scratched through, some circled or ticked with checks. Iselle scowled and pointed to a spot on the map marked with a sturdy hat pin, and said over her shoulder to her handmaiden, “But that’s no better than—” She broke of
f when she saw Cazaril. The dark, invisible cloak still clung about her; only an occasional faint thread of blue light still glinted in its sluggish folds. The ghost-blobs veered violently away from it and, only partly to Cazaril’s relief, vanished from his second sight.

  “Are you all right, Lord Caz?” Iselle inquired, looking at him with her brows drawing down. “You don’t look well.”

  Cazaril bowed greeting. “My apologies for absenting myself yesterday, Royesse. I was taken with a…a colic. It has mostly passed off now.”

  Nan dy Vrit, from her seat in the corner, looked up from her sewing with an unfriendly stare to remark, “The chamber woman had it that you were taken with a bad head from drinking and carousing with the stable grooms. She said she saw you come in so drunk after Lord Dondo’s funeral you could barely stagger.”

  Conscious of Betriz’s unhappy scrutiny, he said apologetically, “Drinking yes; carousing, no. It won’t happen again, milady.” He added a little dryly, “It didn’t answer anyway.”

  “It’s a scandal to the royesse, that her secretary be seen so inebriated that he—”

  “Hush, Nan,” Iselle interrupted this lecture impatiently. “Leave be.”

  “What’s this, Royesse?” Cazaril gestured at the pin-studded map.

  Iselle drew a long breath. “I’ve thought it through. I’ve been thinking for days. As long as I remain unwed, plots will swirl about me. I don’t doubt dy Jironal will produce some other candidate to try to bind me and Teidez to his clan. And other factions—now it’s revealed that Orico would willingly bestow me on a lesser lord, every lesser lord in Chalion will begin badgering him for my hand. My only defense, my only certain refuge, is if I am married already. And not to a lesser lord.”

  Cazaril’s brows rose. “I confess, Royesse, my own thoughts have been running something along those lines.”

  “And swiftly, swiftly, Cazaril. Before they can come up with someone even more disgusting than Dondo.” Her voice was edged with stress.

  “Even our dear chancellor must find that a daunting challenge,” he murmured diffidently, and had the satisfaction of drawing a brief bark of laughter from her. He pursed his lips. “The need is great, I grant you, but the danger is not so instantly pressing as all that. Dy Jironal himself will block the lesser lords for you, I am sure. Your first line of defense must be to block dy Jironal’s next candidate. Although, thinking over his family, it’s not clear to me who he can offer up. His sons are both married, or he might have put forth one of them in place of Dondo. Or offered himself, were he not wed.”