The Curse of Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  No…the shadow followed them.

  Cazaril squeezed his eyes shut and open again. His breath stopped.

  The choking cloud that wrapped Iselle, now wrapped Bergon, too.

  Iselle smiled across at her husband, and Bergon smiled back at her; last night, they had looked excited and tired and a little scared. This morning, they looked like two people in love. With blackness boiling up around them both like the smoke from a burning ship.

  As they approached, Iselle sang him a cheerful, “Good morning, Lord Caz!”

  Bergon grinned, and said, “Will you not join us, sir? We have much to give thanks together for this morning, do we not?”

  Cazaril’s lips drew back on the travesty of a smile. “I…I…a little later. I left something in my room.”

  He heaved himself up and rushed past them up the stairs. He turned and looked again from the gallery as they passed out of the courtyard. Still trailing shadows.

  He slammed the door of his chamber behind himself and stood gasping, almost weeping. Gods. Gods. What have I done?

  I haven’t freed Iselle. I’ve cursed Bergon.

  26

  Distraught, Cazaril kept to his chamber all morning. In the afternoon a page knocked, with the unwelcome news that the royse and royesse desired him to attend upon them in their rooms. Cazaril considered feigning illness, though he hardly need feign. No, for Iselle would surely bring physicians down upon him, probably in packs—he remembered the last time, with Rojeras, and shuddered. With a boundless reluctance, he straightened his garments, making himself presentable, and walked out around the gallery to the royal suite.

  The sitting room’s high casement windows were open to the cool spring light. Iselle and Bergon, still in festive dress from the noon banquet at the March dy Huesta’s palace, awaited him. They sat around the corner from each other at a table that bore paper, parchment, and new pens, with a third chair pulled invitingly to the other side. Their heads, amber and brown, were bent together in low-voiced conversation. The shadow still boiled slowly around them, viscous as hot tar. At Cazaril’s step, they both looked up at him and smiled. He moistened his lips and bowed, his face stiff.

  Iselle gestured at the papers. “Our next most urgent task is to compose a letter to my brother Orico, to acquaint him of the steps we have taken, and assure him of our most loyal submission. I think we should include extracts of all the articles of our marriage most favorable to Chalion, to help reconcile him to it, don’t you think?”

  Cazaril cleared his throat and swallowed.

  Bergon’s brows drew inward. “Caz, you look as pale as a…um. Are you all right? Please, sit down!”

  Cazaril managed a tiny headshake. Again he was tempted to flee into some malingering lie—or half-truth, now, for he was feeling sick enough. “Nothing is all right,” he whispered. He sank to one knee before the royse. “I have made a vast mistake. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Iselle’s wary, startled face blurred in his vision. “Lord Caz…?”

  “Your marriage”—he swallowed again, and forced his numb lips to speak on—“has not lifted the curse from Iselle as I’d hoped. Instead, it has spread it to you both.”

  “What?” breathed Bergon.

  Tears clogged Cazaril’s voice. “And now I know not what to do…”

  “How do you know this?” Iselle asked urgently.

  “I can see it. I can see it on you both now. If anything, it’s even darker and thicker. More grasping.”

  Bergon’s lips parted in dismay. “Did I…did we do something wrong? Somehow?”

  “No, no! But both Sara and Ista married into the House of Chalion, and into the curse. I thought it was because men and women were different, that it somehow followed the male line of Fonsa’s heirs along with the name.”

  “But I am Fonsa’s heir, too,” said Iselle slowly. “And flesh and blood are more than just names. When two become wed, it doesn’t mean that one disappears and only the other remains. We are joined, not subsumed. Oh, is there nothing we can do? There must be something!”

  “Ista said,” Cazaril began, and stopped. He was not at all sure he wanted to tell these two decisive young people what Ista had said. Iselle might take thought again…

  Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be, Iselle had cried. It was much too late to shelter her now. By the wrath of the gods, she was to be the next royina of Chalion. With the right to rule came the duty to protect—the privilege of receiving protection had to be left behind with childhood’s other toys. Even protection from bitter knowledge. Especially from knowledge.

  Cazaril swallowed to unlock his throat. “Ista said there was another way.”

  He climbed into the chair and sat heavily. In a broken voice, in terms so plain as to be almost brutal, Cazaril repeated the tale Ista had told him of Lord dy Lutez, Roya Ias, and her vision of the goddess. Of the two dark hellish nights in the Zangre’s dungeons with the bound man and the vat of icy water. When he finished, both his listeners were pale and staring.

  “I thought—I feared—I might be the one,” Cazaril said. “Because of the night I tried to barter my life for Dondo’s death. I was terrified that I might be the one. Iselle’s dy Lutez, as Ista named me. But I swear before all the gods, if I thought it would work, I’d have you take me outside right now and drown me in the courtyard fountain. Twice. But I cannot become the sacrifice now. My second death must be my last, for the death demon will fly away with my soul and Dondo’s, and I don’t see how there can be any getting it back into my body then.” He rubbed his wet eyes with the back of his hand.

  Bergon gazed at his new wife as if his eyes could swallow her. He finally said huskily, “What about me?”

  “What?” said Iselle.

  “I undertook to come here to save you from this thing. So, the method’s just got a little harder, that’s all. I’m not afraid of the water. What if you drowned me?”

  Cazaril’s and Iselle’s instant protests tumbled out together; Cazaril gave way with a little wave of his hand. Iselle repeated, “It was tried once. It was tried, and it didn’t work. I’m not about to drown either one of you, thank you very much! No, nor hang you either, nor any other horrid thing you can think of. No!”

  “Besides,” Cazaril put in, “the goddess’s words were, a man must lay down his life three times for the House of Chalion. Not of the House of Chalion.” At least, according to Ista. Had she repeated her vision verbatim? Or did her words embed some treacherous error? Never mind, so long as they deterred Bergon from his horrifying suggestion. “I don’t think you can break the curse from the inside, or it would have been Ias, not dy Lutez, who put himself into the barrel. And, five gods forgive me, Bergon, you are now inside this thing.”

  “It feels wrong anyway,” said Iselle, her eyes narrowing. “Some kind of cheat. What was that thing you told me Saint Umegat said, when you’d asked him what you should do? About daily duties?”

  “He said I should do my daily duties as they came to me.”

  “Well, and so. Surely the gods are not done with us.” She drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “It occurs to me…my mother lay down twice in childbed for the House of Chalion. She never had the chance for a third such trial. That is certainly a duty that the gods give to one.”

  Cazaril considered the havoc that the curse might wreak, intersecting with the hazards of pregnancy and childbirth as it had intersected with the chances of Ias’s and Orico’s battles, and shivered. Barrenness like Sara’s was the least of the potential disasters. “Five gods, Iselle, I think we’d do better to put me into the barrel.”

  “And besides,” said Bergon, “the goddess said a man. She did say a man, didn’t She, Caz?”

  “Uh…that was Lady Ista’s account of the words, yes.”

  “The divines say, when the gods instruct men in their pious duties, they mean women, too,” Iselle growled. “You can’t have it both ways. Anyway, I lived under the curse for sixteen years, unknowing. I survived someho
w.”

  But it’s getting worse now. Stronger. Teidez’s death seemed a fair example to Cazaril of its working out—the boy’s special strengths and virtues, few as they had been, all twisted to a dire ill. Iselle and Bergon between them had many strengths and virtues. The scope for the curse’s distortions was immense.

  Iselle and Bergon were gripping hands across the tabletop. Iselle knuckled her eyes with her free hand, pinched the bridge of her nose, and sniffed deeply.

  “Curse or no curse,” she said, “we must make dutiful submission to Orico, and at once. So that dy Jironal cannot declare me to be in revolt. If only I were by Orico, I know I could persuade him of the benefit of this marriage to Chalion!”

  “Orico is very persuadable,” Cazaril admitted dryly. “It’s making him stay persuaded that’s the difficult part.”

  “Yes, and I don’t forget for a moment that dy Jironal is with Orico in Cardegoss. My greatest fear is that the chancellor may, upon hearing this news, somehow persuade Orico to again change the terms of his will.”

  “Attach enough of the provincars of Chalion to your party, Royesse, and they may be willing to help you resist any such late codicils.”

  Iselle frowned deeply. “I wish we might go up to Cardegoss. I should be by Orico, if this proves to be his deathbed. We should be in the capital when events unfold.”

  Cazaril paused, then said, “Difficult. You must not put yourself in dy Jironal’s hands.”

  “I had not planned to go unattended.” Her smile flashed darkly, like the moon on a knife blade. “But we should seize every legal nicety as well as every tactical advantage. It would be well to remind the lords of Chalion that all the chancellor’s legal power flows to him through the roya. Only.”

  Bergon said uneasily, “You know the man better than I do. Do you think dy Jironal will just sit still at this news?”

  “The longer he can be induced to sit, the better. We gain support daily.”

  “Have you heard anything of dy Jironal’s response?” Cazaril asked.

  “Not yet,” said Bergon.

  The time lag ran both ways, alas. “Let me know at once if you do.” Cazaril drew a long breath, flattened out a clean sheet of paper, and picked up a quill. “Now. How do you two wish to style yourselves…?”

  THE PROBLEM OF HOW TO DELIVER THIS POLITICALLY vital missive was a trifle delicate, Cazaril reflected, crossing the courtyard below the royal chambers with the signed and sealed document in his hands. It would not do to toss it into a courier bag for delivery at the gallop to the Zangre Chancellery. The article needed a delegation of men of rank not only to give it, and Iselle and Bergon, the proper weight, but also to assure that it was delivered to Orico and not dy Jironal. Trustworthy men must read the letter out accurately to the dying roya in his blindness, and give politic answers to any questions Orico might have about his sister’s precipitate nuptials. Lords and divines—some of each, Cazaril decided. Iselle’s uncle was fitted to recommend suitable men who might ride out fast, and tonight. His stride lengthened, as he started in search of a page or servant to tell him dy Baocia’s whereabouts.

  Under the tiled archway into the court, he met Palli and dy Baocia himself, hurrying in. They, too, both still wore their banquet garb.

  “Caz!” Palli hailed him. “Where were you at dinner?”

  “Resting. I…had a bad night.”

  “What, and here I’d have sworn you were the only one of us who went to bed sober.”

  Cazaril let this one pass. “What’s this?”

  Palli held up a sheaf of opened letters. “News from dy Yarrin in Cardegoss, sent in haste by Temple courier. I thought the royse and royesse should know at once. Dy Jironal rode out of the Zangre before midmorning yesterday, none knows where.”

  “Did he take troops—no, tell it once. Come on.” Cazaril turned on his heel and led the way back up the gallery stairs to the royal chambers. One of Iselle’s servants admitted them, and went to bring the young couple out to the sitting room again. While they were waiting Cazaril showed them the letter to Orico and explained its contents. The provincar nodded judiciously, and named some likely lords for the task of carrying it to Cardegoss.

  Iselle and Bergon entered, Iselle still patting her braided hair into place, and the three men bowed to them. Royse Bergon, at once alert to the papers in Palli’s hand, bade them be seated around the table.

  Palli repeated his news of dy Jironal. “The chancellor took only a light force of his household cavalry. It seemed to dy Yarrin that he meant to ride either a short way, or very fast.”

  “What news of my brother Orico?” asked Iselle.

  “Well, here…” Palli passed the letter to her for examination. “With dy Jironal out of the way, dy Yarrin tried at once to get in to see the roya, but Royina Sara said he was asleep, and refused to disturb his rest for any supplication. Since she had undertaken to smuggle in dy Yarrin before despite dy Jironal, he fears the roya may have taken a turn for the worse.”

  “What’s the other letter?” asked Bergon.

  “Old news, but interesting all the same,” said Palli. “Cazaril, what in the world is the old archdivine saying about you? The commander of the Taryoon troop of the Order of the Son came to me, all a-tremble—he seems to think you’re god-touched and dares not approach you. He wanted to talk to a man who bore Temple oaths like himself. He’d received a copy of an order that had gone out from the Chancellery to all the military posts of the Order of the Son in western Chalion—for your arrest, if it please you, for treason. You are slandered—”

  “Again?” murmured Cazaril, taking the letter.

  “And accused of sneaking into Ibra to sell Chalion to the Fox. Which, since all the world now knows the real case, falls a trifle flat.”

  Cazaril scanned down the order. “I see. This was his net to catch me if his assassins failed at the border. He set it out a bit too late, I’m afraid. As you say, old news.”

  “Yes, but it has a sequel. This obedient fool of a troop commander sent a letter in turn to dy Jironal, admitting he’d seen you but excusing himself from arresting you. He protested that the arrest order was clearly a misapprehension. That you had acted under the Royesse Iselle’s orders, and had done great good for Chalion, and no treason; that the marriage was immensely popular with the people of Taryoon. And that everyone thinks the royesse is extremely beautiful, too. That the new Heiress was seen by everyone as wise and good, and a great relief and hope after the disasters of Orico’s reign.”

  Dy Baocia snorted. “Which, as they are concomitantly the disasters of dy Jironal’s reign, works out to an unintended insult. Or was it unintended?”

  “I rather think so. The man is, um, plain-minded and plainspoken. He says he meant it to help persuade dy Jironal to turn to the royesse’s support.”

  “It’s more likely to effect the opposite,” said Cazaril slowly. “It would persuade dy Jironal that his own support is failing rapidly and that he had better take action at once to shore it up. When would dy Jironal have received this sage advice from his subordinate?”

  Palli’s lips twisted. “Early yesterday morning.”

  “Well…there’s nothing in it that he would not have received from other sources by then, I suppose.” Cazaril passed the order over to Bergon, waiting with keen interest.

  “So, dy Jironal’s out of Cardegoss,” said Iselle thoughtfully.

  “Yes, but gone where?” asked Palli.

  Dy Baocia pulled his lip. “If he left with so few men, it has to be to somewhere that his forces are mustered. Somewhere within striking distance of Taryoon. That means either to his son-in-law the provincar of Thistan, to our east, or to Valenda, to our northwest.”

  “Thistan is actually closer to us,” said Cazaril.

  “But in Valenda, he holds my mother and sister hostage,” said dy Baocia grimly.

  “No more now than before,” said Iselle, her voice stiff with suppressed worry. “They bade me go, Uncle…”

  Be
rgon was listening with close attention. The Ibran royse had grown up with civil war, Cazaril was reminded; he might be disturbed, but he showed no signs of panic.

  “I think we should ride straight for Cardegoss while dy Jironal is out of it, and take possession,” said Iselle.

  “If we are to mount such a foray,” her uncle demurred, “we should take Valenda first, free our family, and secure our base. But if dy Jironal is mustering men to attack Taryoon, I do not wish to strip it of defenses.”

  Iselle gestured urgently. “But if Bergon and I are out of Taryoon, dy Jironal will have no reason to attack it. Nor Valenda either. It’s me he wants—must have.”

  “The vision of dy Jironal ambushing your column on the road, where you are out in the open and vulnerable, doesn’t appeal to me much either,” said Cazaril.

  “How many men could you spare to escort us to Cardegoss, Uncle?” Iselle asked. “Mounted. The foot soldiers to follow at their best speed. And how soon could they be mustered?”

  “I could have five hundred of horse by tomorrow night, and a thousand of foot the day after,” dy Baocia admitted rather reluctantly. “My two good neighbors could send as many, but not as soon.”

  Dy Baocia could pull out double that number from his hat, Cazaril thought, if he weren’t hedging. Too great a care could be as fatal as too great a carelessness when the moment came to hazard all.

  Iselle folded her hands in her lap and frowned fiercely. “Then have them make ready. We will keep the predawn vigil of prayers for the Daughter’s Day and attend the procession as we had planned. Uncle, Lord dy Palliar, if it please you send out what men you can find to ride in all directions for news of dy Jironal’s movements. And then we’ll see what new information we have by tomorrow night, and take a final decision then.”

  The two men bowed, and hurried out; Iselle bade Cazaril stay a moment.

  “I did not wish to argue with my uncle,” she said to him in a tone of doubt, “but I think Valenda is a distraction. What do you think, Cazaril?”