The Curse of Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Ista likewise, presumably?”

  “Presumably.”

  “So—could Iselle marry out of the curse? Shed it with her marriage vows, when she leaves her family of birth behind and enters into the family of her husband? Or would the curse follow her to taint them both?”

  Umegat’s brows went up. “I don’t know.”

  “But you don’t know that it’s impossible? I was thinking that it might be a way to salvage…something.”

  Umegat sat back. “Possibly. I don’t know. It was never a ploy to consider, for Orico.”

  “I need to know, Umegat. Royesse Iselle is pushing Orico to open negotiations for her marriage out of Chalion.”

  “Chancellor dy Jironal will surely not allow that.”

  “I would not underestimate her powers of persuasion. She is not another Sara.”

  “Neither was Sara, once. But you are right. Oh, my poor Orico, to be pressed between two such grinding stones.”

  Cazaril bit his lip, and paused a long time before venturing his next query. “Umegat…you’ve been observing this court for many years. Was dy Jironal always so poisonous a peculator, or has the curse slowly been corrupting him, too? Did the curse draw such a man to his position of power, or would any man trying to serve the House of Chalion become so corroded, in time?”

  “You ask very interesting questions, Lord Cazaril.” Umegat’s graying brows drew down in thought. “I wish I had better answers. Martou dy Jironal was always forcible, intelligent, able. We shall leave aside consideration of his younger brother, who made his reputation as a strong arm in the field, not a strong head in the court. When he first took up the post of chancellor I would have judged the elder dy Jironal no more susceptible to the temptations of pride and greed than any other high lord of Chalion with a clan to provide for.”

  Faint enough praise, that. And yet…

  “Yet I think…” Umegat seemed to continue Cazaril’s very thought, his eyes rising to meet his guest’s, “the curse has done him no good either.”

  “So…getting rid of dy Jironal is not the solution to Orico’s woes? Another such man, perhaps worse, would simply rise in his place?”

  Umegat opened his hands. “The curse takes a hundred forms, twisting each good thing that should be Orico’s according to the weaknesses of its nature. A wife grown barren instead of fertile. A chief advisor corrupt instead of loyal. Friends fickle instead of true, food that sickens instead of strengthening, and on and on.”

  A secretary-tutor grown cowardly and foolish instead of brave and wise? Or maybe just fey and mad… If any man who came within the curse’s ambit was vulnerable, was he destined to become Iselle’s plague, as dy Jironal was Orico’s? “And Teidez, and Iselle—must all her choices fall out as ill as Orico’s, or does he bear a special burden, being the roya?”

  “I think the curse has grown worse for Orico over time.” The Roknari’s gray eyes narrowed. “You have asked me a dozen questions, Lord Cazaril. Allow me to ask you one. How came you into the service of Royesse Iselle?”

  Cazaril opened his mouth and sat back, his mind jumping first to the day the Provincara had ambushed him with her offer of employment. But no, before that came…and before that came…He found himself instead telling Umegat of the day a soldier of the Daughter astride a nervy horse had dropped a gold coin in the mud, and how he had arrived in Valenda. Umegat brewed tea at the little fire and pushed a steaming mug in front of Cazaril, who paused only to lubricate his drying throat. Cazaril described how Iselle had discomfited the crooked judge on the Daughter’s Day, and, at length, how they had all come to Cardegoss.

  Umegat pulled on his queue. “Do you think your steps were fated from that far back? Disturbing. But the gods are parsimonious, and take their chances where they can find them.”

  “If the gods are making this path for me, then where is my free will? No, it cannot be!”

  “Ah.” Umegat brightened at this thorny theological point. “I have had another thought on such fates, that denies neither gods nor men. Perhaps, instead of controlling every step, the gods have started a hundred or a thousand Cazarils and Umegats down this road. And only those arrive who choose to.”

  “But am I the first to arrive, or the last?”

  “Well,” said Umegat dryly, “I can promise you you’re not the first.”

  Cazaril grunted understanding. After a little time spent digesting this, he said suddenly, “But if the gods have given you to Orico, and me to Iselle—though I think Someone has made a holy mistake—who is given for the protection of Teidez? Shouldn’t there be three of us? A man of the Brother, surely, though whether tool or saint or fool I know not—or have all the boy’s hundred destined protectors fallen by the roadside, one by one? Maybe the man is just not here yet.” A new thought robbed Cazaril of breath. “Maybe it was supposed to have been dy Sanda.” He leaned forward, burying his face in his hands. “If I stay here talking theology with you much longer, I swear I’ll end up drinking myself blind again, just to make my brain stop spinning round and round inside my skull.”

  “Addiction to drink is actually a fairly common hazard, among divines,” said Umegat.

  “I begin to see why.” Cazaril tilted back his head to catch the last trickle of tea, grown cold in his cup, and set it down. “Umegat…if I must ask of every action not only if it is wise or good, but also if it’s the one I’m supposed to choose, I shall go mad. Madder. I’ll end up curled in a corner not doing anything at all, except maybe mumbling and weeping.”

  Umegat chuckled—cruelly, Cazaril thought—but then shook his head. “You cannot outguess the gods. Hold to virtue—if you can identify it—and trust that the duty set before you is the duty desired of you. And that the talents given to you are the talents you should place in the gods’ service. Believe that the gods ask for nothing back that they have not first lent to you. Not even your life.”

  Cazaril rubbed his face, and inhaled. “Then I shall bend all my efforts to promoting this marriage of Iselle’s, to break the hold of the curse upon her. I must trust my reason, or why else did the goddess choose a reasonable man for Iselle’s guardian?” Though he added under his breath, “At least, I used to be a reasonable man…” He nodded, far more firmly than he felt, and pushed back his chair. “Pray for me, Umegat.”

  “Every hour, my lord.”

  IT WAS GROWING DARK WHEN LADY BETRIZ BROUGHT a taper into Cazaril’s office and drifted about for a moment lighting his reading candles in their glass vases. He smiled and nodded thanks. She smiled back and blew out her taper, but then paused, not yet returning to the women’s chambers. She stood, Cazaril observed, in the same spot where they had parted the night of Dondo’s death.

  “Things seem to be settling down a little now, thank the gods,” she remarked.

  “Yes. A little.” Cazaril laid down his quill.

  “I begin to believe all will be well.”

  “Yes.” His stomach cramped. No.

  A long pause. He picked up his quill again, and dipped it, although he had nothing more to write.

  “Cazaril, must you believe you are about to die in order to bring yourself to kiss a lady?” she demanded abruptly.

  He ducked his head, flushing, and cleared his throat. “My deepest apologies, Lady Betriz. It won’t happen again.”

  He dared not look up, lest she try anew to break through his fragile barriers. Lest she succeed. Oh, Betriz, do not sacrifice your dignity to my futility!

  Her voice grew stiff. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Castillar.”

  He kept his eyes on his ledger as her footsteps retreated.

  SEVERAL DAYS PASSED, AS ISELLE CONTINUED HER campaign upon Orico. Several nights passed, made ghastly for Cazaril by the howls of Dondo’s soul in its private torment. This intestinal visitation did indeed prove to be nightly, a quarter of an hour reprising the terror of that death. Cazaril could not fall to sleep before the midnight interlude, in sick apprehension, nor for long after it, in shaken resonanc
e, and his face grew gray with fatigue. The blurry old phantasms began to seem pleasant pets by comparison. There was no way he could drink enough wine, nightly, to sleep through it, so he set himself to endure.

  Orico endured his sister’s visitations with less fortitude. He took to avoiding her in increasingly bizarre ways, but she broke in upon him anyway, in chamber, kitchen, and once, to Nan dy Vrit’s scandal, his steam bath. The day he rode out to his hunting lodge in the oak woods at dawn, Iselle followed promptly after breakfast. Cazaril was relieved to note that his own spectral retinue fell behind as they rode out of the Zangre, as though bound to their place of death.

  It was clear that the fast gallop was an inexpressible joy to Iselle, as she shook out the knots and strains of her trammeled existence in the castle. A day in the saddle in the crisp early-winter air, going and returning from an otherwise futile interview, brightened her eye and put color in her cheeks. Lady Betriz was no less invigorated. The four Baocian guards told off to ride with them kept up, but only just, laboring along with their horses; Cazaril concealed agony. He passed blood again that evening, which he’d not done for some days, and Dondo’s nightly serenade proved especially shattering because, for the first time, Cazaril’s inward ear could make out words in the cries. They weren’t words that made any sense, but they were distinguishable. Would more follow?

  Dreading another such ride, Cazaril wearily climbed the stairs to Iselle’s chambers late the next morning. He had just eased himself stiffly into his chair at his desk and taken up his account book, when Royina Sara appeared, accompanied by two of her ladies. She wafted past Cazaril in a cloud of white wool. He scrambled to his feet in surprise and bowed deeply; she acknowledged his existence with a faint, faraway nod.

  A flurry of feminine voices in the forbidden chambers beyond announced her visit to her sister-in-law. Both the royina’s ladies-in-waiting and Nan dy Vrit were exiled to the sitting room, where they sat sewing and quietly gossiping. After about half an hour, Royina Sara came out again and crossed through Cazaril’s office antechamber with the same unsmiling abstraction.

  Betriz followed shortly. “The royesse bids you attend upon her in her sitting chamber,” she told Cazaril. Her black eyebrows were crimped tight with worry. Cazaril rose at once and followed her inside.

  Iselle sat in a carved chair, her hands clenched upon its arms, pale and breathing heavily. “Infamous! My brother is infamous, Cazaril!” she told him as he made his bow and pulled a stool up to her knee.

  “My lady?” he inquired, and let himself down as carefully as he could. Last night’s belly cramp still lingered, and stabbed him if he moved too quickly.

  “No marriage without my consent, aye, he spoke that truly enough—but none without dy Jironal’s consent, either! Sara has whispered it to me. After his brother’s death, but before he rode out of Cardegoss to seek the murderer, the chancellor closeted himself with my brother and persuaded him to make a codicil to his will. In the event of Orico’s death, the chancellor is made regent for my brother Teidez—”

  “I believe that arrangement has been known for quite some time, Royesse. There is a regency council set up to advise him, as well. The provincars of Chalion would not let that much power pass to one of their number without a check.”

  “Yes, yes, I knew that, but—”

  “The codicil does not attempt to abolish the council, does it?” asked Cazaril in alarm. “That would set the lords in an uproar.”

  “No, that part is left all as it was. But formerly, I was to be the ward of my grandmother and my uncle the provincar of Baocia. Now, I am to be transferred to dy Jironal’s own wardship. There is no council to check that! And listen, Cazaril! The term of his guardianship is set to be until I marry, and permission for my marriage is left entirely in his hands! He can keep me unwed till I die of old age, if he chooses!”

  Cazaril concealed his unease and held up a soothing hand. “Surely not. He must die of old age long before you. And well before that, when Teidez comes to his man’s estate and the full powers of the royacy, he can free you with a royal decree.”

  “Teidez’s majority is set at twenty-five years, Cazaril!”

  A decade ago, Cazaril would have shared her outrage at this lengthy term. Now it sounded more like a good idea. But not, granted, with dy Jironal in the saddle instead.

  “I would be almost twenty-eight years old!”

  Twelve more years for the curse to work upon her, and within her…no, it was not good by any measure.

  “He could dismiss you from my household instantly!”

  You have another Patroness, who has not chosen to dismiss me yet. “I grant you have cause for concern, Royesse, but don’t borrow trouble before its time. None of this matters while Orico lives.”

  “He is not well, Sara says.”

  “He is not very fit,” Cazaril agreed cautiously. “But he’s not by any means an old man. He’s barely more than forty.”

  By the expression on Iselle’s face, she found that quite aged enough. “He is more…not-well than he appears. Sara says.”

  Cazaril hesitated. “Is she that intimate with him, to know this? I had thought them estranged.”

  “I don’t understand them.” Iselle knuckled her eyes. “Oh, Cazaril, it was true what Dondo told me! I thought, later, that it might have been just a horrid lie to frighten me. Sara was so desperate for a child, she agreed to let dy Jironal try, when Orico…could not, anymore. Martou was not so bad, she said. He was at least courteous. It was only when he could not get her with child either that his brother cajoled him to let him into the venture. Dondo was dreadful, and took pleasure in her humiliation. But Cazaril, Orico knew. He helped persuade Sara to this outrage. I don’t understand, because Orico surely does not hate Teidez so much he’d wish to set dy Jironal’s bastard in his place.”

  “No.” And yes. A son of dy Jironal and Sara would not be a descendant of Fonsa the Fairly-wise. Orico must have reasoned that such a child might grow up to free the royacy of Chalion from the Golden General’s death curse. A desperate measure, but possibly an effective one.

  “Royina Sara,” Iselle added, her mouth crooking, “says if dy Jironal finds Dondo’s murderer, she plans to pay for his funeral, pension his family, and have perpetual prayers sung for him in the temple of Cardegoss.”

  “That’s good to know,” said Cazaril faintly. Although he had no family to pension. He hunched over a little and smiled to hide a grimace of pain. So, not even Sara, who had filled Iselle’s maiden ears with details of shocking intimacy, had told her of the curse. And he was certain now that Sara, too, knew of it. Orico, Sara, dy Jironal, Umegat, probably Ista, possibly even the Provincara, and not one had chosen to burden these children with knowledge of the dark cloud that hung over them. Who was he to betray that implicit conspiracy of silence?

  No one told me, either. Do I thank them now for their consideration? When, then, did Teidez’s and Iselle’s protectors plan to let them know of the geas that wrapped them round? Did Orico expect to tell them on his deathbed, as he’d been told by his father Ias?

  Had Cazaril the right to tell Iselle secrets that her natural guardians chose to conceal?

  Was he prepared to explain to her just how he had found it all out?

  He glanced at Lady Betriz, seated now on another stool and anxiously watching her distressed royal mistress. Even Betriz, who knew quite well that he had attempted death magic, did not know that he had succeeded.

  “I don’t know what to try next,” moaned Iselle. “Orico is useless.”

  Could Iselle escape this curse without ever having to know of it? He took a deep breath, for what he was about to say skirted treason. “You could take steps to arrange your marriage yourself.”

  Betriz stirred and sat up, her eyes widening at him.

  “What, in secret?” said Iselle. “From my royal brother?”

  “Certainly in secret from his chancellor.”

  “Is that legal?”

  Caza
ril blew out his breath. “A marriage, contracted and consummated, cannot readily be set aside even by a roya. If a sufficiently large camp of Chalionese were persuaded to support you in it—and a considerable faction of opposition to dy Jironal exists ready-made—setting it aside would be rendered still harder.” And if she were got out of Chalion and placed under the protection of, say, as shrewd a father-in-law as the Fox of Ibra, she might leave curse and faction both behind altogether. Arranging the matter so that she didn’t simply trade being a powerless hostage in one court for being a powerless hostage in another was the hard part. But at least an uncursed hostage, eh?

  “Ah!” Iselle’s eyes lit with approval. “Cazaril, can it be done?”

  “There are practical difficulties,” he admitted. “All of which have practical solutions. The most critical is to discover a man you can trust to be your ambassador. He must have the wit to gain you the strongest possible position in negotiation with Ibra, the suppleness to avoid offending Chalion, nerve to pass in disguise across uneasy borders, strength for travel, loyalty to you and you alone, and courage in your cause that must not break. A mistake in this selection would be fatal.” Possibly literally.

  She pressed her hands together, and frowned. “Can you find me such a man?”

  “I will bend my thoughts to it, and look about me.”

  “Do so, Lord Cazaril,” she breathed. “Do so.”

  Lady Betriz said, in an oddly dry voice, “Surely you need not look far.”

  “It cannot be me.” With a swallow, he converted I could fall dead at your feet at any moment to, “I dare not leave you here without protection.”

  “We shall all think on it,” said Iselle firmly.

  THE FATHER’S DAY FESTIVITIES PASSED QUIETLY. CHILL rain dampened the celebrations in Cardegoss, and kept many from the Zangre from attending the municipal procession, though ORICO went as a royal duty and as a result contracted a head cold. He turned this to account by taking to his bed and avoiding everyone thereby. The Zangre’s denizens, still in black and lavender for Lord Dondo, kept a sober Father’s Feast, with sacred music but no dancing.