The Curse of Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Cazaril, leaning in exhaustion on the corral rail and thinking only of how much he didn’t want to throw a leg over any animal, spavined or not, for the next thousand years, at last straightened and let himself through the gate. He walked out into the herd of milling horses and mules, stirred up by the rough-and-ready capture of their rejected comrades, spread his hands, and closed his eyes. “If it please you, Lady, give us three good mules.”

  At a nudge at his side, he opened them again. A curious mule, its brown eyes limpid, stared at him. Two more muscled in, their long ears waggling; the tallest one, dark brown with a creamy nose, rested its chin on his shoulder and breathed out a contented-sounding snort, spraying the environs.

  “Thank you, Lady,” muttered Cazaril. And more loudly, “All right. Follow me.” He plodded back through the hoof-pocked muck to the gate. The three mules fell in behind, snuffling with interest.

  “We’ll take these three,” he told the horse trader, who, along with Ferda, had fallen silent and was staring openmouthed.

  The horse trader found his voice first. “But—but those are my three best animals!”

  “Yes. I know.” He let himself back out, leaving the horse trader to hold the gate against the three mules who still tried to follow him, shouldering up heavily against the boards and making anxious mulish noises. “Ferda, come to a price. I’m going to go lie down in that lovely straw stack. Wake me when we’re saddled up…”

  His mule proved healthy, steady, and bored. There was nothing better, in Cazaril’s view, on these treacherous mountain trails than a bored mule. The fiery steeds Ferda favored for making time over the flats could have climbed no faster on these breath-stealing slopes, besides making a menace of themselves with their nervous sidling on the narrow places. And the mule’s gentle amble didn’t churn his guts. Although if the goddess granted Her saint mules, he didn’t know why She didn’t also give him better weather.

  The dy Gura brothers stopped laughing at Cazaril’s hat about halfway up the pass over the Bastard’s Teeth range. He folded the fine fur flaps down over his ears and tied their strings under his chin before the sleet, driven by the tumbling updrafts, started stinging their faces. He squinted into the wind between the laid-back ears of his laboring mule at the track winding up through rocks and ice, and mentally measured out the daylight left to them.

  After a time, Ferda reined back beside him. “My lord, should we take shelter from this blizzard?”

  “Blizzard?” Cazaril brushed ice spicules from his beard, and blinked. Oh. Palliar’s winters were mild, sodden rather than snowy, and the brothers had never been out of their province before. “If this were a blizzard, you wouldn’t be able to see your mule’s ears from where you sit. This isn’t unsafe. Merely unpleasant.”

  Ferda made a face of dismay, but pulled his hood strings tighter and bent into the wind. Indeed, in a few more minutes they broke out of the squall, and visibility returned; the high vale opened out before their eyes. A few fingers of pale sunlight poked down through silvery clouds to dapple the long slopes—falling away downward.

  Cazaril pointed, and shouted encouragingly, “Ibra!”

  THE WEATHER MODERATED AS THEY STARTED THE long descent toward the coast, though the grunting mules shuffled no faster. The rugged border mountains gave way to less daunting hills, humped and brown, with broad valleys winding between. When they left the snow behind Cazaril reluctantly permitted Ferda to trade in their excellent mules for swifter horses. A succession of improving roads and increasingly civilized inns brought them in just two more days to the river course that ran down to Zagosur. They passed through outlying farms, and over bridges across irrigation canals swollen with the winter rains.

  They debouched from the river valley to find the city rising up before them: gray walls, a blocky jumble of whitewashed houses with roofs of the distinctive green tile of this region, the fortress at its crown, the famous harbor at its feet. The sea stretched out beyond, steel gray, the endless level horizon of it streaked with aqua light. The salt-and-sea-wrack smell of low tide, wafting inland on a cold breeze, made Cazaril’s head jerk back. Foix inhaled deeply, his eyes alight with fascination as he drank in his first sight of the sea.

  Palli’s letter and the dy Gura brothers’ rank secured them shelter at the Daughter’s house off Zagosur’s main Temple plaza. Cazaril sent the boys to buy, beg, or borrow formal dress of their order, while he took himself off to a tailor. The news that the tailor might name his price so long as he produced something swiftly launched a flurry of activity that resulted in Cazaril emerging, little more than an hour later, with a tolerable version of Chalionese court mourning garb under his arm.

  After a chilly sponge bath, Cazaril quickly slipped into a heavy lavender-gray brocade tunic, very high-necked, thick dark purple wool trousers, and his cleaned and polished boots. He adjusted the sword belt and sword Ser dy Ferrej had lent him so long ago, rather worn but looking more honorable thereby, and swung the satisfying weight of a black silk-velvet vest-cloak over the whole. One of Iselle’s remaining rings, a square-cut amethyst, just fit over Cazaril’s little finger, its isolated heavy gold suggesting restraint rather than poverty. Between the court mourning and the gray streaks in his beard, he fancied the result was as grave and dignified as could be wished. Serious. He packaged up his precious diplomatic letters and tucked them under his arm, collected his outriders, who had refurbished themselves in neat blue and white, and led the way through the narrow, winding streets up the hill to the Great Fox’s lair.

  Cazaril’s appearance and bearing brought him before the Roya of Ibra’s castle warder. Showing his letters and their seals to this official sped him in turn to the roya’s own secretary, who met them standing in a bare whitewashed antechamber, chilly with Zagosur’s perpetual winter damp.

  The secretary was spare, middle-aged, and harried. Cazaril favored him with a half bow, equal to equal.

  “I am the Castillar dy Cazaril, and I come from Cardegoss on a diplomatic mission of some urgency. I bear letters of introduction to the roya and Royse Bergon dy Ibra from the Royesse Iselle dy Chalion.” He displayed their seals, but folded them back to his chest when the secretary reached for them. “I received these from the royesse’s own hand. She bade me deliver them into the roya’s own hand.”

  The secretary’s head tilted judiciously. “I’ll see what I can do for you, my lord, but the roya is very plagued with petitioners, mostly relatives of former rebels attempting to intercede for the roya’s mercy, which is stretched thin at present.” He looked Cazaril up and down. “I think perhaps no one has warned you—the roya has forbid the court to wear mourning for the late Heir of Ibra, as he died in a state of unreconciled rebellion. Only those who wish to cast their defiance in the roya’s teeth are wearing that sad garb, and most of them have the presence of mind to do it in, ah, absence. If you do not intend the insult, I suggest you go change before you beg an audience.”

  Cazaril’s brows went up. “Is no one here before me with the news? We rode fast, but I didn’t think we had outdistanced it. I do not wear these bruised colors for the Heir of Ibra, but for the Heir of Chalion. Royse Teidez died barely a week ago, suddenly, of an infection.”

  “Oh,” said the secretary, startled. “Oh.” He regained his balance smoothly. “My condolences indeed to the House of Chalion, to lose so bright a hope.” He hesitated. “Letters from the Royesse Iselle, do you say?”

  “Aye.” Cazaril added, for good measure, “Roya Orico lies gravely ill, and does not do business, or so it was when we left Cardegoss in haste.”

  The secretary’s mouth opened, and closed. He finally said, “Come with me,” and led them to a more comfortable chamber, with a small fire in a corner fireplace. “I’ll go see what I can do.”

  Cazaril lowered himself into a cushioned chair near the gentle glow. Foix took a bench, though Ferda prowled about, frowning in an unfocused fashion at the wall hangings.

  “Will they see us, sir?” asked Ferda.
“To have ridden all this way, only to be kept waiting on the doorstep like some peddler…”

  “Oh, yes. They’ll see us.” Cazaril smiled slightly, as a breathless servant arrived to offer the travelers wine and the little spiced shortbread cakes, stamped with an Ibran seal, which were a Zagosur specialty.

  “Why does this dog have no legs?” Foix inquired, staring a trifle cross-eyed at the indented creature before biting into his cake.

  “It is a sea dog. It has paddles in place of paws, and chases fish. They make colonies upon the shore, here and there down the coast toward Darthaca.” Cazaril allowed the servant to pour him but a swallow of wine, partly for sobriety, partly to avoid waste; as he’d anticipated, he’d barely wet his lips before the secretary returned.

  The man bowed lower than before. “Come this way, if it please you, my lord, gentlemen.”

  Ferda gulped down his glassful of dark Ibran wine, and Foix brushed crumbs from his white wool vest-cloak. They hastily followed Cazaril and the secretary, who led them up some stairs and across a little arched stone bridge to a newer part of the fortress. After more turnings, they came to a pair of double doors carved with sea creatures in the Roknari style.

  These swung open to emit a well-dressed lord, arm in arm with another courtier, complaining, “But I waited five days for this audience! What is this foolery—!”

  “You’ll just have to wait a little longer, my lord,” said the courtier, guiding him off with a firm hand under his elbow.

  The secretary bowed Cazaril and the dy Gura brothers inside, and announced their names and ranks.

  It was not a throne room, but a less formal receiving chamber, set up for conference, not ceremony. A broad table, roomy enough to spread out maps and documents, occupied one end. The long far wall was pierced with a row of doors with square windowpanes set top to bottom, giving onto a balcony-cum-battlement that in turn overlooked the harbor and shipyard that were the heart of Zagosur’s wealth and power. The silvery sea light, diffuse and pale, illuminated the chamber through the generous glass, making the candle flames in the sconces seem wan.

  Half a dozen men were present, but Cazaril’s eye had no trouble picking out the Fox and his son. At seventy-odd, the roya of Ibra was stringy, balding, the russet hair of his younger days reduced to a wispy fringe of white around his pate. But he remained vigorous, not fragile with his years, alert and relaxed in his cushioned chair. The tall youth standing at his side had the straight brown Darthacan hair of his late mother, though tinged with reddish highlights, worn just long enough to cushion a helmet, cut bluntly. He looks healthy, at least. Good… His sea-green vest-cloak was set with hundreds of pearls in patterns of curling surf, which made it swing in elegant, weighty ripples when he turned toward these new visitors.

  The man standing on the Fox’s other side was proclaimed by his chain of office to be the chancellor of Ibra. A wary and intimidated-looking fellow, he was the—from all reports, overworked—servant of the Fox, not a rival for his power. Another man’s badges marked him as a sea lord, an admiral of Ibra’s fleet.

  Cazaril went to one knee before the Fox, not too ungracefully despite his saddle-stiffness and aches, and bowed his head. “My lord, I bring sad news from Ibra of the death of Royse Teidez, and urgent letters from his sister the Royesse Iselle.” He proffered Iselle’s letter of his authority.

  The Fox cracked the seal, and scanned rapidly down the simple penned lines. His brows climbed, and he glanced back keenly at Cazaril. “Most interesting. Rise, my lord Ambassador,” he murmured.

  Cazaril took a breath, and managed to surge back to his feet without having either to push off the floor with his hand or, worse, catch himself on the roya’s chair. He looked up to find Royse Bergon staring hard at him, his lips parted in a frown. Cazaril blinked, and favored him with a tentative nod and smile. He was quite a well-made young man, withal, even-featured, perhaps handsome when he wasn’t scowling so. No squint, no hanging lip—a little stocky, but fit, not fat. And not forty. Young, clean-shaven, but with a vigor in the shadow on his chin that promised he was grown to virility. Cazaril thought Iselle should be pleased.

  Bergon’s stare intensified. “Speak again!” he said.

  “Excuse me, my lord?” Cazaril stepped back, startled, as the royse stepped forward and circled him, his eyes searching him up and down, his breath coming faster.

  “Take off your shirt!” Bergon demanded suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Take off your shirt, take off your shirt!”

  “My lord—Royse Bergon—” Cazaril was thrown back in memory to the ghastly scene engineered by dy Jironal to slander him to Orico. But there were no sacred crows here in Zagosur to rescue him. He lowered his voice. “I beg you, my lord, do not shame me in this company.”

  “Please, sir, a year and more ago, in the fall, were you not rescued from a Roknari galley off the coast of Ibra?”

  “Oh. Yes…?”

  “Take off your shirt!” The royse was practically dancing, circling around him again; Cazaril felt dizzy. He glanced at the Fox, who looked as baffled as everyone else, but waved his hand curiously, endorsing the royse’s peculiar demand. Confused and frightened, Cazaril complied, popping the frogs of his tunic and slipping it off together with his vest-cloak, and folding the garments over his arm. He set his jaw, trying to stand with dignity, to bear whatever humiliation came next.

  “You’re Caz! You’re Caz!” Bergon cried. His frown had changed to a demented grin. Ye gods, the royse was mad, and after all this pelting gallop over plain and mountain, unfit for Iselle after all—

  “Why, yes, so my friends call me—” Cazaril’s words were choked off as the royse abruptly flung his arms around him, and nearly lifted him off his feet.

  “Father,” Bergon cried joyously, “this is the man! This is the man!”

  “What,” Cazaril began, and then, by some trick of angle and shift of voice, he knew. Cazaril’s own gape turned to grin. The boy has grown! Roll him back a year in time and four inches in height, erase the beard-shadow, shave the head, add a peck of puppy fat and a blistering sunburn…“Five gods,” he breathed. “Danni? Danni!”

  The royse grabbed his hands and kissed them. “Where did you go? I fell sick for a week after I was brought home, and when I finally set men to look for you, you’d disappeared. I found other men from the ship, but not you, and none knew where you’d gone.”

  “I was ill also, in the Mother’s hospital here in Zagosur. Then I, um, walked home to Chalion.”

  “Here! Right here all the time! I shall burst. Ah! But I sent men to the hospitals—oh, how did they miss you there? I thought you must have died of your injuries, they were so fearsome.”

  “I was sure he must have died,” said the Fox slowly, watching this play with unreadable eyes. “Not to have come to collect the very great debt my House owed to him.”

  “I did not know…who you were, Royse Bergon.”

  The Fox’s gray eyebrows shot up. “Truly?”

  “No, Father,” Bergon confirmed eagerly. “I told no one who I was. I used the nickname Mama used to call me by when I was little. It seemed to me more unsafe to claim my rank than to pass anonymously.” He added to Cazaril, “When my late brother’s bravos kidnapped me, they did not tell the Roknari captain who I was. They meant me to die on the galley, I think.”

  “The secrecy was foolish, Royse,” chided Cazaril. “The Roknari would surely have set you aside for ransom.”

  “Yes, a great ransom, and political concessions wrung from my father, too, no doubt, if I’d allowed myself to be made hostage in my own name.” Bergon’s jaw tightened. “No. I would not hand myself to them to play that game.”

  “So,” said the Fox in an odd voice, staring up at Cazaril, “you did not interpose your body to save the royse of Ibra from defilement, but merely to save some random boy.”

  “Random slave boy. My lord.” Cazaril’s lips twisted, as he watched the Fox trying to work out just what this m
ade Cazaril, hero or fool.

  “I wonder at your wits.”

  “I’m sure I was half-witted by then,” Cazaril conceded amiably. “I’d been on the galleys since I was sold as a prisoner of war after the fall of Gotorget.”

  The Fox’s eyes narrowed. “Oh. So you’re that Cazaril, eh?”

  Cazaril essayed him a small bow, wondering what he had heard of that fruitless campaign, and shook out his tunic. Bergon hastened to help him don it again. Cazaril found himself the object of stunned stares from every man in the room, including Ferda and Foix. His tilted grin barely kept back bubbling laughter, though underneath the laughter seethed a new terror that he could scarcely name. How long have I been walking down this road?

  He pulled out the last letter in his packet, and swept a deeper bow to Royse Bergon. “As the document your respected father holds attests, I come as spokesman for a proud and beautiful lady, and I come not just to him, but to you. The Heiress of Chalion begs your hand in marriage.” He handed the sealed missive to the startled Bergon. “In this, I will let the Royesse Iselle speak for herself, which she is most fit to do by virtue of her singular intellect, her natural right, and her holy purpose. After that, I will have much else to tell you, Royse.”

  “I’m eager to hear you, Lord Cazaril.” Bergon, after a taut glance around the chamber, took himself off to a window-door, where he popped the letter’s seal and read it at once, his lips softening with wonder.

  Amazement, too, touched the Fox’s lips, though it rendered them anything but soft. Cazaril had no doubt he’d put the man’s wits to the gallop. For his own wits he now prayed for wings.

  CAZARIL AND HIS COMPANIONS WERE, OF COURSE, invited to dine that night in the roya’s hall. Near sunset, Cazaril and Bergon went walking together along the sea strand below the fortress. It was as close to private speech as he was likely to obtain, Cazaril thought, waving the dy Guras back to trail along through the sand out of earshot. The growl of the surf cloaked the sound of their voices. A few white gulls swooped and cried, as piercing as any crow, or pecked at the smelly sea wrack on the wet sand, and Cazaril was reminded that these scavengers with their cold golden eyes were sacred to the Bastard in Ibra.