He glanced aside to find that dy Cembuer had crept up to him.
   “What was that? ” Dy Cembuer sounded very close to tears.
   “Some miracles.” Too many in one place at one time. He was overwhelmed with miracles. They filled his eyes in every direction.
   Speaking was a mistake, for the vibration stirred the pain in his gut. Though he could speak; the sword did not appear to have pierced his lung. He imagined how much it would hurt to cough blood, just now. Gut wound, then. I will be dead again in three days. He could smell a faint scent of shit, mixed with the scorched meat and the goddess’s perfume. And sobbing… no, wait, the deadly fecal smell was not coming from him, yet. The Baocian captain was curled up in a tight ball on his side a little way off, his arms locked around his head, weeping. He did not seem to have any wound. Ah. Yes. He had been the nearest living witness. The goddess must have brushed against him, in Her passage.
   Cazaril risked another breath. “What did you see?” he asked dy Cembuer.
   “That man—was that dy Jironal?”
   Cazaril nodded, a tiny careful nod.
   “When he stabbed you, there was a hellish crack, and he burst into blue fire. He is… what did… did the gods strike him down?”
   “Not exactly. It was… a little more complicated than that…” It seemed strangely quiet in the courtyard. Cazaril risked turning his head. About half of the bravos, and a few servants of Iselle’s household, were laid flat on the ground. Some were mumbling rapidly under their breaths; others were crying like the Baocian captain. The rest had vanished.
   Cazaril thought he could see now why a man had to lay down his life three times to do this. And here he’d imagined the gods were being arbitrary and difficult for the sake of some arcane punishment. He’d needed the first two deaths just for the practice. The first, to learn how to accept death in the body—his flogging on the galley, that had been. He had not miscounted—that death had not been for the House of Chalion at the time. But it had become so, with Iselle’s marriage to Bergon and its consummation; the joining of two into one, that had shared the curse so horrifyingly between them, had apparently also portioned out this sacrifice. Bergon’s secret dowry, eh. Cazaril hoped he might live long enough to tell him, and that the royse would be pleased. His second acceptance, of death of the soul, had been in the lonely company of crows in Fonsa’s tower. So that when he came at last to this one, he could offer the goddess a smooth and steady partnering… humbling parallels involving the training of mules offered themselves to his mind.
   Footsteps sounded. Cazaril glanced up to see dy Tagille, winded and disheveled but with his sword sheathed, running into the courtyard. He dashed up to them and stopped abruptly. “Bastard’s hell.” He glanced aside at his Ibran comrade. “Are you all right, dy Cembuer?”
   “Sons of bitches broke my arm again. He’s the scary one. What’s happening out there?”
   “Dy Baocia rallied his men, and has driven the invaders out of the palace. It’s all very confused right now, but the rest of them seem to be running through town trying to get to the temple.”
   “To assail it?” dy Cembuer asked in alarm. He tried to struggle to his feet again.
   “No. To surrender to armed men who will not try to tear them limb from limb. It seems every citizen of Taryoon has taken to the streets after them. The women are the worst. Bastard’s hell,” he repeated, staring at dy Jironal’s smoking corpse, “some Chalionese soldier was screaming and babbling that he’d seen dy Jironal struck by lightning from a clear blue sky for the sacrilege of offering battle on the Daughter’s Day. And I scarcely believed him.”
   “I saw it, too,” said dy Cembuer. “There was a horrible noise. He didn’t even have time to cry out.”
   Dy Tagille dragged the corpse a little way off and knelt in front of Cazaril, staring fearfully at his skewered stomach and then into his face. “Lord Cazaril, we must try to draw this sword from you. Best we do it at once.”
   “No… wait…” Cazaril had once seen a man plugged with a crossbow bolt live for half an hour, until the bolt was drawn out; his blood had gushed forth then, and he’d died. “I want to see Lady Betriz first.”
   “My lord, you cannot sit there with a sword stuck through you!”
   “Well,” said Cazaril reasonably, “I surely cannot move…” Trying to talk made him pant. Not good. He was shivering and very cold. But the throbbing pain was not as devastating as he’d expected, probably because he’d managed to hold so still. As long as he held very still, it wasn’t much worse than Dondo’s clawings.
   Other men arrived in the courtyard. Babble and noise and cries from the wounded washed between the walls, and tales repeated over and over in rising voices. Cazaril ignored it all, taken up with his pebble again. He wondered where it had come from, how it had arrived there. What it had been before it was a pebble. A rock? A mountain? Where? For how many years? It filled his mind. And if a pebble could fill his mind, what might a mountain do? The gods held mountains in their minds, and all else besides, all at once. Everything, with the same attention he gave to one thing. He had seen that, through the Lady’s eyes. If it had endured for longer than that infinitesimal blink, he thought his soul would have burst. As it was he felt strangely stretched. Had that glimpse been a gift, or just a careless chance?
   “Cazaril?”
   A trembling voice, the voice he had been waiting for. He looked up. If the pebble was amazing, Betriz’s face was astounding. The structure of her nose alone could have held him entranced for hours. He abandoned the pebble at once for this better entertainment. But water welled up, shimmering, in her brown eyes, and her face was drained of color. That wasn’t right. Worst of all, her dimples had gone into hiding.
   “There you are,” he said happily. His voice was a muzzy croak. “Kiss me now.”
   She gulped, knelt, shuffled up to him on her knees, and stretched her neck. Her lips were warm. The perfume of her mouth was nothing at all like a goddess’s, but like a human woman’s, and very good withal. His lips were cold, and he pressed them to hers as much to borrow her heat and youth as anything. So. He’d been swimming in miracle every day of his life, and hadn’t even known it.
   He eased his head back. “All right.” He did not add, That’s enough, because it wasn’t. “You can draw the sword out now.”
   Men moved around him, mostly worried-looking strangers. Betriz rubbed her face, undid the frogs of his tunic, and stood and hovered. Someone gripped his shoulders. A page proffered a folded pad to clap to his wound, and someone else held lengths of bandages ready to wrap his torso.
   Cazaril squinted in uncertainty. Betriz was here: therefore, Iselle must be, must be… “Iselle? Bergon?”
   “I’m here, Lord Caz.” Iselle’s voice came off to his side.
   She moved around in front of him, staring at him in extreme dismay. She had shed her heavily embroidered outer robes in her flight, and still seemed a trifle breathless. She had also shed the black cloak of the curse… had she not? Yes, he decided. His inner vision was darkening, but he did not mistake this.
   “Bergon is with my uncle,” she continued, “helping to clear dy Jironal’s remaining men from the area.” Her voice was firm in its disregard of the tears running down her face.
   “The black shadow is lifted,” he told her, “from you and Bergon. From everyone.”
   “How?”
   “I’ll tell you all about it, if I live.”
   “Caz aril!”
   He grinned briefly at the familiar, exasperated cadences around his name.
   “You live, then!” Her voice wavered. “I—I command you!”
   Dy Tagille knelt in front of Cazaril.
   Cazaril gave him a short nod. “Draw it.”
   “Very straight and smoothly, Lord dy Tagille,” Iselle instructed tensely, “so as not to cut him any worse.”
   “Aye, my lady.” Dy Tagille licked his lips in apprehension and grasped the sword’s hilt.
   “Carefully,” gasped Cazaril, “but not quite so slowly, please…”

   The blade left him; a warm gush of liquid spurted from the mouth of his wound after it. Cazaril had hoped to pass out, but he only swayed as pads were clapped to him and held hard fore and aft. He stared down expecting to see his lap awash in blood, but no flood of red met his sight; it was a clear liquid, merely tinged with pink. Sword must have lanced my tumor. Which was not, it appeared, and the Bastard fry Rojeras for inflicting that nightmare upon him, stuffed with some grotesque demon fetus after all. He tried not to think, At least not anymore. A murmur of astonishment passed among the ring of watchers as the scent of celestial flowers from this exudation filled the air.
   He let himself fall, boneless and unresisting, into his eager helpers’ arms. He did manage to surreptitiously scoop up his pebble before the willing hands bore him off up the stairs to his bedchamber. They were excited and frightened, but he was growing delightfully relaxed. It seemed he was to be fussed over, lovely. When Betriz held his hand, as he was eased into his bed, he gripped hers and did not let go.

Chapter 28

   A tapping and low voices at his chamber door drew Cazaril from his doze. The room was dim. A single candle flame pushing back a deep dark told him night was fallen. He heard the physician, who had been sitting with him, murmuring, “He is sleeping, Roy—Royina…”
   “No, I’m not,” Cazaril called eagerly. “Come in.” He tensed his arms to push himself upright, then thought better of it. He added, “Make more light. A deal more light. I want to see you.”
   A great party of persons shuffled into his chamber, attempting to make themselves quiet and gentle, like a parade gone suddenly shy. Iselle and Bergon, with Betriz and Palli attendant upon them; the archdivine of Taryoon, with the little judge of the Father staring around in his wake. They quite filled the room. Cazaril smiled up amiably at them from his horizontal paradise of clean linens and stillness as candle was held to candle and the flames multiplied.
   Bergon looked down at him in apprehension and whispered hoarsely to the physician, “How is he?”
   “He passed a deal of blood in his water earlier, but less tonight. He has no fever yet. I daren’t let him have more than a few sips of tea, till we know how his gut wound progresses. I don’t know how much pain he bears.”
   Cazaril decided he preferred to speak for himself. “I hurt, no doubt of that.” He made another feeble attempt to roll up, and winced. “I would sit up a little. I cannot talk looking up all your noses like this.” Palli and Bergon rushed to help gently raise him, plumping pillows behind him.
   “Thank you,” said Iselle to the physician, who bowed and, taking the royal hint, stepped out of the way.
   Cazaril eased back with a sigh, and said, “What has transpired? Is Taryoon under attack? And don’t talk in those funereal whispers, either.”
   Iselle smiled from the foot of his bed. “Much has happened,” she told him, her voice reverting to its normal firm timbre. “Dy Jironal had men advancing as fast as they could march from both his son-in-law in Thistan and from Valenda, to follow up in support of his spies and abductors got in at the festival. Late last night the column coming down the road from Valenda met the delegation carrying our letter to Orico in Cardegoss, and captured them.”
   “Alive, yes?” said Cazaril in alarm.
   “There was some scuffle, but none killed, thank the gods. Much debate followed in their camp.”
   Well, he had sent the most sensible, persuasive men of weight and worth that Taryoon could muster for that embassy.
   “Later in the afternoon, we sent out parties of parley. We included some of dy Jironal’s men who had witnessed the fight in the courtyard, and… and whatever that miraculous blue fire was that killed him, to explain and to testify. They cried and gibbered a lot, but they were very convincing. Cazaril, what really —oh, and they say Orico is dead.”
   Cazaril sighed. I knew that. “When?”
   The archdivine of Taryoon replied, “There’s some confusion about that. A Temple courier rode through to us this afternoon with the news. She bore me a letter from Archdivine Mendenal in Cardegoss saying it was the night after the royesse’s—the royina’s wedding. But dy Jironal’s men all say he told them Orico had died the night before it, and so he was now rightful regent of Chalion. I suppose he was lying. I’m not sure it matters, now.”
   But it might have mattered, had events taken a different path… Cazaril frowned in curious speculation.
   “In any case,” put in Bergon, “between the news of dy Jironal’s startling taking-off, and the failure and capture of their infiltrators, and the realization that they marched not against a rebellious Heiress, but their rightful royina, the columns have broken up. The men are returning to their homes. I’m just back from overseeing that.” Indeed, he was mud-splashed, bright-eyed with the exuberance of success—and relief.
   “Do you think the truce will hold?” asked Cazaril. “Dy Jironal held the strings of a very considerable network of power and relations, all of whom still have their interests at risk.”
   Palli grunted, and shook his head. “They have not the backing of forces from the Order of the Son, now it’s headless—worse, they’ve the near certainty that control of the order will pass out of their faction now. I think the Jironal clan will learn caution.”
   “The provincar of Thistan has already sent us a letter of submission,” put in Iselle, “just arrived. It looks to have been hastily penned. We plan to wait one more day to be sure the roads are clear, and to give thanks to the gods in the temple of Taryoon. Then Bergon and I will ride for Cardegoss with a contingent of my uncle’s cavalry, for Orico’s funeral and my coronation.” Her mouth turned down. “I fear we will have to leave you here for a time, Lord Caz.”
   He glanced at Betriz, watching him, her eyes dark with concern. Where Iselle rode, Betriz, her first courtier, must needs follow.
   Iselle went on, “Don’t speak if it pains you too much, but Cazaril… what happened in the courtyard? Did the Daughter truly strike dy Jironal dead with a bolt of lightning?”
   “His body looked it, I must say,” said Bergon. “All cooked. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
   “That is a good story,” said Cazaril slowly, “and will do for most men. You here should know the truth, but… I think this truth should go no further, eh?”
   Iselle quietly bade the physician excuse himself. She glanced curiously at the little judge. “And this gentleman, Cazaril?”
   “The Honorable Paginine is… is in the way of being a colleague of mine. He should stay, and the archdivine as well.”
   Cazaril found his audience ranged around his bed, staring at him rather breathlessly. Neither Paginine nor the archdivine, nor Palli, knew the preamble about Dondo and the death demon, Cazaril realized, and so he found himself compelled to revert to that beginning, though in as few words as he could make come out sensibly. At least he hoped it sounded coherent, and not like the ravings of a madman.
   “Archdivine Mendenal in Cardegoss knows all this tale,” he assured the shocked-looking pair from Taryoon. Palli’s mouth was twisted in something between astonishment and indignation; Cazaril evaded his eye a trifle guiltily. “But when dy Jironal bade his men hold me unarmed, and ran me through—when he murdered me, the death demon bore us all off in an unbalanced confusion of killers and victims. That is, the demon bore the pair of them, but somehow my soul was attached, and followed… what I saw then… the goddess…” his voice faltered. “I don’t know how to open my mouth and push out the universe in words. It won’t fit. If I had all the words in all the languages in the world that ever were or will be, and spoke till the end of time, it still couldn’t…” He was shivering, suddenly, his eyes blurred with tears.
   “But you weren’t really dead, were you?” said Palli uneasily.
   “Oh, yes. Just for a little while… for an odd angle of little that came out, um, very large. If I had not died in truth, I could not have ripped open the wall between the worlds, and the goddess could not have reached in to take back the curse. Which was a drop of the Father’s blood, as nearly as I could tell, though how the Golden General came by such a gift I know not. That’s a metaphor, by the way. I’m sorry. I have not… I have not the words for what I saw. Talking about it is like trying to weave a box of shadows in which to carry water.” And our souls are parched. “The Lady of Spring let me look through Her eyes, and though my second sight is taken back—I think—my eyes do not seem to work quite the same as they did…”
   The archdivine signed himself. Paginine cleared his throat, and said diffidently, “Indeed, my lord, you do not make that great roaring light about you anymore.”
   “Do I not? Oh, good.” Cazaril added eagerly, “But the black cloak about Iselle and Bergon, it is gone as well, yes?”
   “Yes, my lord. Royse, Royina, if it please you. The shadow seems to be lifted altogether.”
   “So all is well. Gods, demons, ghosts, the whole company, all gone. There’s nothing odd left about me now,” said Cazaril happily.
   Paginine screwed up his face in an expression that was not quite appalled, not quite a laugh. “I would not go so far as to say that, my lord,” he murmured.
   The archdivine nudged Paginine, and whispered, “But he speaks the truth, yes? Wild as it seems…”
   “Oh, yes, Your Reverence. I have no doubt of that.” The bland stare he traded Cazaril bore rather more understanding than that of the archdivine’s, who was looking astonished and overawed.
   “Tomorrow,” Iselle announced, “Bergon and I shall make a thanksgiving procession to the temple, walking barefoot to sign our gratitude to the gods.”
   Cazaril said in muzzy worry, “Oh. Oh, do be careful, then. Don’t step on any broken glass or old nails, now.”
   “We shall watch out for each other’s steps the whole way,” Bergon promised him.
   Cazaril added aside to Betriz, his hand creeping across the coverlet to touch hers, “You know, I am not haunted anymore. Quite a load off my mind, in more ways than one. Very liberating to a man, that sort of thing…” His voice was dropping in volume, raspy with fatigue. Her hand turned under his, and gave a secret squeeze.
   “We should withdraw and let you rest,” said Iselle, frowning in renewed worry. “Is there anything you desire, Cazaril? Anything at all?”
   About to reply No, nothing, he said instead, “Oh. Yes. I want music.”
   “Music?”

   “Perhaps some very quiet music,” Betriz ventured. “To lull him to sleep.”
   Bergon smiled. “If it please you, then, see to it, Lady Betriz.” The mob withdrew, tiptoeing loudly. The physician returned. He let Cazaril drink tea, in trade for making more blood-tinted piss for him to examine suspiciously by candlelight and growl at in an unsettling fashion.
   At length, Betriz came back with a nervous-looking young lutenist who appeared to have been wakened out of a sound sleep for this command performance. But he worked his fingers, tuned up, and played seven short pieces. None of them was the right one; none evoked the Lady and Her soul-flowers, till he played an eighth, an interlaced counterpoint of surpassing sweetness. That one had a faint echo of heaven in it. Cazaril had him play it through twice more, and cried a little, upon which Betriz insisted that he was too tired and must sleep now, and bore the young man off again.
   And Cazaril still hadn’t had a chance to tell her about her nose. When he tried to explain this miracle to the physician, the man responded by giving him a large spoonful of syrup of poppies, after which they ceased to alarm each other for the rest of the night.


* * *

   In three days’ time his wounds stopped leaking scented fluid, closing cleanly, and the physician permitted Cazaril thin gruel for breakfast. This revived him enough to insist on being allowed out to sit in the spring sun of the courtyard. The expedition seemed to require an inordinate number of servants and helpers, but at last he was guided carefully down the stairs and into a chair lined with wool-padded and feather-stuffed cushions, with his feet propped up on another cushioned chair. He shooed away his helpers and gave himself over to a most delicious idleness. The fountain burbled soothingly. The trees in the tubs unfurled more fragrant flowers. A pair of little orange-and-black birds stitched the air, bringing dry grass and twigs to build a nest tucked up in the carvings on one of the gallery’s supporting posts. An ambitious litter of paper and pens lay forgotten on the small table at Cazaril’s elbow as he watched them flit back and forth.
   Dy Baocia’s palace was very quiet, with its royal guests and its lord and lady all gone to Cardegoss. Cazaril therefore smiled with lazy delight when the wrought-iron gate under the end archway swung aside to admit Palli. The march had been assigned by his new royina the dull task of keeping watch over her convalescent secretary while everyone else went off to the grand events in the capital, which seemed to Cazaril rather an unfair reward for Palli’s valiant service. Palli had attended upon him so faithfully, Cazaril felt quite guilty for wishing Iselle might have spared Lady Betriz instead.
   Palli, grinning, gave him a mock salute and seated himself on the fountain’s edge. “Well, Castillar! You look better. Very vertical indeed. But what’s this”—he gestured to the table—“work? Before they left yesterday your ladies charged me to enforce a very long list of things you were not to do, most of which you will be glad to know I have forgotten, but I’m sure work was high on it.”
   “No such thing,” said Cazaril. “I was going to attempt some poetry after the manner of Behar, but then there were these birds… there goes one now.” He paused to mark the orange-and-black flash. “People compliment birds for being great builders, but really, these two seem terribly clumsy. Perhaps they are young birds, and this is their first try. Persistent, though. Although I suppose if I was to attempt to build a hut using only my mouth, I would do no better. I should write a poem in praise of birds. If matter that gets up and walks about, like you, is miraculous, how much more marvelous is matter that gets up and flies!”
   Palli’s mouth quirked in bemusement. “Is this poetry or fever, Caz?”
   “Oh, it is a great infection of poetry, a contagion of hymns. The gods delight in poets, you know. Songs and poetry, being of the same stuff as souls, can cross into their world almost unimpeded. Stone carvers, now… even the gods are in awe of stone carvers.” He squinted in the sun and grinned back at Palli.
   “Nevertheless,” murmured Palli dryly, “one feels that your quatrain yesterday morning to Lady Betriz’s nose was a tactical mistake.”
   “I was not making fun of her!” Cazaril protested indignantly. “Was she still angry at me when she left?”
   “No, no, she wasn’t angry! She was persuaded it was fever, and was very worried withal. If I were you, I’d claim it for fever.”
   “I could not write a poem to all of her just yet. I tried. Too overwhelming.”
   “Well, if you must scribble paeans to her body parts, pick lips. Lips are more romantic than noses.”
   “Why?” asked Cazaril. “Isn’t every part of her an amazement?”
   “Yes, but we kiss lips. We don’t kiss noses. Normally. Men write poems to the objects of our desire in order to lure them closer.”
   “How practical. In that case, you’d think men would write more poems to ladies’ private parts.”
   “The ladies would hit us. Lips are a safe compromise, being as it were a stand-in or stepping-stone to the greater mysteries.”
   “Hah. Anyway, I desire all of her. Nose and lips and feet and all the parts between, and her soul, without which her mere body would be all still and cold and claylike, and start to rot, and be not an object of desire at all.”
   “Agh!” Palli ran his hand through his hair. “My friend, you do not understand romance.”
   “I promise you, I do not understand anything anymore. I am gloriously bewildered.” He lay back in his cushions and laughed softly.
   Palli snorted, and bent forward to pick up the paper from the top of the pile, the only one so far with writing on it. He glanced down it, and his brows rose. “What’s this? This isn’t about ladies’ noses.” His face sobered; his gaze traveled back to the top of the page, and down once more. “In fact, I’m not just sure what it’s about. Although it makes the hairs stand up on the backs of my arms…”
   “Oh, that. It’s nothing, I fear. I was trying—but it wasn’t”—Cazaril’s hands waved helplessly, and came back to touch his brow—“it wasn’t what I saw.” He added in explanation, “I thought in poetry the words might bear more freight, exist on both sides of the wall between the worlds, as people do. So far I’m just creating waste paper, fit only for lighting a fire.”
   “Hm,” said Palli. Unobtrusively, he folded up the paper and tucked it inside his vest-cloak.
   “I’ll try again,” sighed Cazaril. “Maybe I can get it right someday. I must write some hymns to matter, too. Birds. Stones. That would please the Lady, I think.”
   Palli blinked. “To lure Her closer?”
   “Might.”
   “Dangerous stuff, this poetry. I think I’ll stick to action, myself.”
   Cazaril grinned at him. “Watch out, my lord Dedicat. Action can be prayer, too.”
   Whispers and muffled giggles sounded from the end of the gallery. Cazaril looked up to see some servant women and boys crouched behind the carved railings, peeking through at him. Palli followed his glance. One girl popped up boldly and waved at them. Amiably, Cazaril waved back. The giggles rose to a crescendo, and the women scurried off. Palli scratched his ear and regarded Cazaril with wry inquiry.
   Cazaril explained, “People have been sneaking in all morning to see the spot where poor dy Jironal was struck down. If he’s not careful, Lord dy Baocia will lose his nice new courtyard to a shrine.”
   Palli cleared his throat. “Actually, Caz, they’re sneaking in to peek at you. A couple of dy Baocia’s servants are charging admission to conduct the curious in and out of the palace. I was of two minds whether to quash the enterprise, but if they’re bothering you, I will…” He shifted, as if to rise.
   “Oh. Oh, no, don’t trouble them. I have made a great deal of extra work for the palace servants. Let them profit a bit.”
   Palli snorted, but shrugged acquiescence. “And you still have no fever?”
   “I wasn’t sure at first, but no. That physician finally let me eat, although not enough. I am healing, I think.”
   “That’s a miracle in itself, worth a vaida to see.”

  “Yes. I’m not quite sure if putting me back into the world this way was a parting gift of the Lady, or just a chance benefit of Her need to have someone on this side to hold open the gate for Her. Ordol was right about the gods being parsimonious. Well, it’s all right either way. We shall surely meet again someday.” He leaned back, staring into the sky, the Lady’s own blue. His lips curled up, unwilled.
   “You were the soberest fellow I ever met, and now you grin all the time. Caz, are you sure She got your soul back in right way round?”
   Cazaril laughed out loud. “Maybe not! You know how it is when you travel. You pack all your things in your saddlebags, and by the journey’s end, they seem to have doubled in volume and are hanging out every which way, even though you’d swear you added nothing…” He patted his thigh. “Perhaps I am just not packed into this battered old case as neatly as I used to be.”
   Palli shook his head in wonder. “And so now you leak poetry. Huh.”


* * *

   Ten more days of healing left Cazaril not at all bored with resting, if only his ease were not so empty of the people he desired. At last his longing for them overcame his revulsion at the prospect of getting on a horse again, and he set Palli to arranging their journey. Palli’s protests at this premature exercise were perfunctory, easily overborne, as he was no less anxious than Cazaril to see how events in Cardegoss went on.
   Cazaril and his escort, including the ever-faithful Ferda and Foix, traveled up the road in the fine weather in gentle, easy stages, a world apart from winter’s desperate ride. Each evening Cazaril was helped from his horse swearing that tomorrow they would go more slowly, and each morning he found himself even more eager to push on. At length the distant Zangre again rose before his eyes. Against the backdrop of puffy white clouds, blue sky, and green fields, it seemed a rich ornament to the landscape.
   A few miles out of Cardegoss they encountered another procession on the road. Men in the livery of the provincar of Labran escorted three carts and a trailing tail of mules and servants. Two of the carts were piled with baggage. The third cart’s canvas top, rolled up to open the sides to the spring scenery, shaded several ladies.
   The ladies’ cart pulled to the side of the road and a servingwoman leaned out to call to one of the outriders. The Labran sergeant bent his head to her, rode up in turn to Palli and Cazaril, and saluted.
   “If it please you, sirs, if one of you is the Castillar dy Cazaril, my lady the Dowager Royina Sara bid—begs,” he corrected himself, “you to wait upon her.”
   The present provincar of Labran, Cazaril was reminded, was Royina Sara’s nephew. He gathered that he was witnessing her removal—or retreat—to her family estates there. He returned the salute. “I am entirely at the royina’s service.”
   Foix helped Cazaril from his horse. Steps were let down from the back of the cart, and the ladies and maidservants descended to stroll together about the fallow field nearby and examine the spring wildflowers. Sara remained seated in the shadow of the canvas. “Please you, Castillar,” she called softly, “I am glad for this chance crossing. Can you bide with me a moment?”
   “I am honored, lady.” He ducked his head and climbed into the cart, seating himself on the padded bench opposite hers. The baggage mules plodded on past them. A peaceful, distant murmur enveloped the scene, of birdsong, low voices, the bridle-jingle and champing of the horses let to graze by the roadside, and the occasional trill of laugher from the maidservants.
   Sara was dressed now in a simply cut gown and vest-cloak of lavender and black, mourning for poor doomed Orico, presumably.
   “My apologies,” said Cazaril, with an acknowledging nod at her garb, “for not attending the roya’s funeral. I was not yet recovered enough to travel.”
   She waved this away. “From what Iselle and Bergon and Lady Betriz have told me, it is a miracle you survived your wounds.”
   “Yes, well… precisely.”
   She gave him an oddly sympathetic look.
   “Orico was taken up safely, then?” Cazaril asked.
   “Yes, by the Bastard. As gods-rejected in death as he was in life. It stirred a bit of unpleasant speculation about his parentage, alas.”
   “Not so, lady. He was surely Ias’s child. I think the Bastard has been special guardian of his House since Fonsa’s reign. And so this time the god picked first, not last.”
   She shrugged her thin shoulders. “A sorry guardianship, if so. On the day before he died, Orico said to me that he wished he’d been born the son of a woodcutter, and not the son of the roya of Chalion. Of all the epitaphs on his death, his own seems the most apposite to me.” Her voice grew a shade more sour. “Martou dy Jironal, they say, was taken up by the Father.”
   “So I had heard. They sent his body to his daughter in Thistan to take charge of. Well, he, too, had his part to play, and little enough joy it brought him in the end.” He offered after a moment, “I can personally guarantee you, though, his brother Dondo was carried to the Bastard’s hell.”
   A small, grim smile curved her lips. “Perchance he may learn better manners there.”
   There seemed nothing to add to this, as epitaphs went.
   Cazaril was reminded of a curiosity, and diffidently cleared his throat. “The day before Orico died. And which day would that have been, my lady?”
   Her eyes flew to his, and her dark brows went up. After a moment she said, “Why, the day after Iselle’s wedding, of course.”
   “Not the day before? Martou dy Jironal seemed strangely misinformed, then. Not to mention premature in certain of his actions. And… it seems to me very like a certain cursed luck, to die just a day before one’s rescue.”
   “I, and Orico’s physician, and Archdivine Mendenal, who all attended on him together, will all swear that Orico yet lived to speak to us that afternoon and evening, and did not breathe his sad last until early the next morning.” She met his gaze very directly indeed, her lips still set in that same grim curve. “And so Iselle’s marriage to Royse Bergon is unassailably valid.”
   And thus a legal quibble was rendered unavailable to disaffected lords as a pretext for defiance. Cazaril imagined it, her daylong secret deathwatch beside the gelid bloated corpse of her husband. What had she thought about, what had she reflected upon, as the hours crept by in that sealed chamber? And yet she had made of that horror a pragmatic gift for Iselle and Bergon, for the House of Chalion that she was departing. He pictured her suddenly as a tidy housewife, sweeping out her old familiar rooms for the last time, and leaving a vase of flowers on the hearth for the new owners.
   “I… think I see.”
   “I think you do. You always had very seeing eyes, Castillar.” She added after a moment, “And a discreet tongue.”
   “A condition of my service, Royina.”
   “You have served the House of Chalion well. Better, perhaps, than it deserved.”
   “But not half so well as it needed.”
   She sighed agreement.
   He made polite inquiry after her plans; she was indeed returning to her home province, to take residence at a country estate happily to be entirely under her own direction. She seemed not just resigned but eager to escape Cardegoss and leave it to her successors. Cazaril, rising, wished her well, and a safe journey, with all his heart. He kissed her hands; she in turn kissed his and, briefly, touched her fingertips to his forehead as he bent to her.
   He watched her train of carts rumble away, wincing in sympathy as they jounced over the ruts. The roads of Chalion could use improvement, Cazaril decided, and he had ridden over enough of them to know. He’d seen roads in the Archipelago made wide and smooth for all weathers—perhaps Iselle and Bergon needed to import some Roknari masons. Better roads, with fewer bandits on them, would do a world of good for Chalion. Chalion-Ibra, he corrected this thought, and smiled as Foix gave him a leg up onto his horse.

Chapter 29

   Palli had sent Ferda galloping ahead while Cazaril lingered by the roadside to speak with Royina Sara. As a result, the Zangre’s castle warder and an array of servants were waiting to greet the party from Taryoon when they rode at last into the castle courtyard. The castle warder bowed to Cazaril as the grooms helped him down from his horse. Cazaril stretched, carefully, and asked in an eager voice, “Are Royina Iselle and Royse Bergon within?”
   “No, my lord. They are just this hour gone to the temple, for the ceremonies of investiture for Lord dy Yarrin and Royse Bergon.”
   The new royina had, as anticipated, selected dy Yarrin for the new holy general of the Daughter’s Order. The appointment of Bergon to the Son’s generalship was, in Cazaril’s view, a brilliant stroke to recover direct control of that important military arm for the royacy, and remove it as a bone of contention among the high lords of Chalion. It had been Iselle’s own idea, too, when they had discussed the matter before she and Bergon had left Taryoon. Cazaril had pointed out that while she could not in honor fail to reward dy Yarrin’s loyalty with the appointment he’d so ardently desired, dy Yarrin was not a young man; in time, the generalship of the Daughter, too, must revert to the royacy.
   “Ah!” cried Palli. “Today, is it? Is the ceremony still going forward, then?”
   “I believe so, March.”
   “If I hurry, perhaps I can see some of it. Cazaril, may I leave you to the good care of this gentleman? My lord warder, see that he takes his rest. He is not nearly so recovered from his late wounds as he will try to make you believe.”
   Palli reined his horse around and gave Cazaril a cheery salute. “I shall return with all the tale for you when it’s done.” Followed by his little company, he trotted back out the gate.
   Grooms and servants whisked away horses and baggage. Cazaril refused, in what he hoped was a dignified manner, the support of the castle warder’s proffered arm, at least until they should have reached the stairs. The castle warder called him back as he started toward the main block.
   “Your room has been moved by order of the royina to Ias’s Tower,” the castle warder explained, “that you may be near her and the royse.”
   “Oh.” That had a pleasing sound to it. Agreeably, Cazaril followed the man up to the third floor, where Royse Bergon and his Ibran courtiers had taken their new residence, although Bergon had evidently chosen another official bedchamber for himself than the one Orico had lately died in. Not, Cazaril was given to understand, that the royse slept there. Iselle had just moved into the old royina’s suite, above. The castle warder showed Cazaril to the room near Bergon’s that was to be his. Someone had moved his trunk and few possessions over from his old chamber, and entirely new clothing for tonight’s banquet was already laid out waiting. Cazaril let the servants bring him wash water, but then shooed them away and lay down obediently to rest.
   This lasted about ten minutes. He rose again and prowled up one flight to examine his new office arrangements. A maidservant, recognizing him, curtsied him past. He poked his nose into the chamber Sara had kept for her secretary. As he expected, it was now filled with his records, books, and ledgers from the royesse’s former household, with a great many more added. Unexpectedly, a neat dark-haired fellow, who looked to be about thirty years old, manned his broad desk. He wore the gray robe and carmine shoulder braid of a divine of the Father, and was scratching figures into one of Cazaril’s own account books. Opened correspondence lay fanned out at his left hand, and a larger stack of finished letters rose at his right.
   He glanced up at Cazaril in polite but cool inquiry. “May I help you, sir?”
   “I—excuse me, I do not believe we have met. Who are you?”
   “I am Learned Bonneret, Royina Iselle’s private secretary.”
   Cazaril’s mouth opened, and shut. But I’m Royina Iselle’s private secretary! “A temporary appointment, is it?”
   Bonneret’s eyebrows went up. “Well, I trust it shall be permanent.”
   “How came you by the post?”
   “Archdivine Mendenal was kind enough to recommend me to the royina.”
   “Lately?”
   “Excuse me?”
   “You are lately appointed?”
   “These two weeks past, sir.” Bonneret frowned in faint annoyance. “Ah—you have the advantage of me, I believe?”
   Quite the reverse. “The royina… didn’t tell me,” said Cazaril. Was he discarded, shunted from his position of trust? Granted, the avalanche of tasks attendant upon Iselle’s ascension to the royacy was hardly going to halt while Cazaril slowly recovered; someone had to attend to them. And, Cazaril noted by the outgoing inscriptions, Bonneret had beautiful handwriting. The divine was frowning more deeply at him. He supplied, “My name is Cazaril.”
   Bonneret’s frown evaporated, to be replaced with an even more alarming awed smile; he dropped his quill, spattering ink, and scrambled abruptly to his feet. “My lord dy Cazaril! I am honored!” He bowed low. “What may I do to help you, my lord?” he repeated, in a very different tone.
   This eager courtesy daunted Cazaril far more than Bonneret’s former superciliousness. He mumbled some incoherent excuse for his intrusion, pleaded weariness from the road, and fled back downstairs.
   He filled a little time inventorying his clothing and too-few books and arranging them in his new chamber. Amazingly, nothing seemed to be missing from his possessions. He wandered to his narrow window, which looked down over the town. He swung his casement wide and craned his neck out, but no sacred crows flew in to visit him. With the curse broken, the menagerie gone, did they still roost in Fonsa’s Tower? He studied the temple domes, and made plans to seek out Umegat at his first opportunity. Then he sat in bewilderment.
   He was shaken, and knew it partly for an effect of fatigue. His energy was still fragile, spasmodic. His healing gut wound ached from the morning’s riding, although not as much as when Dondo had used to claw him from the inside. He was gloriously unoccupied, a fact that alone had been enough to keep him ecstatically happy for days. It didn’t seem to be working this afternoon, though. All his urgent push to arrive here made this quiet rest that everybody thought he ought to be having feel rather a letdown.
   His mood darkened. Maybe there was no use for him in this new Chalion-Ibra. Iselle would need more learned, smoother men now to help manage her vastly enlarged affairs than a battered and, well, strange ex-soldier with a weakness for poetry. Worse—to be culled from Iselle’s service was to be exiled from Betriz’s daily presence. No one would light his reading candles at dusk, or make him wear warm unfashionable hats, or notice if he fell ill and bring him frightening physicians, or pray for his safety when he was far from home…
   He heard the clatter and noise of what he presumed was Iselle and Bergon’s party returning from the ceremonies at the temple, but even at an angle his window did not give a view onto the courtyard. He ought to rush out to greet them. No. I’m resting. That sounded mulish and petulant even to his own inward ear. Don’t be a fool. But a dreary fatigue anchored him in his chair.
   Before he could overcome his wash of melancholy, Bergon himself bustled into his chamber, and then it became impossible to stay down-at-the-mouth. The royse was still wearing the brown, orange, and yellow robes of the holy general of the Son’s Order, with its broad sword belt ornamented with the symbols of autumn, all looking a lot better on him than they ever had on old gray dy Jironal. If Bergon was not a joy to the god, there was no pleasing Him at all. Cazaril rose, and Bergon embraced him, inquired after his trip from Taryoon and his healing, barely waited for the answer, tried to tell him in turn of eight things at once, then burst out laughing at himself.
   “There will be time for all this shortly. Right now I am on a mission from my wife the royina of Chalion. But tell me first and privately, Lord Caz—do you love the Lady Betriz?”
   Cazaril blinked. “I… she… very fond, Royse.”
   “Good. I mean, I was sure of it, but Iselle insisted I ask first. Now, and very important—are you willing to be shaved?”
   “I—what?” Cazaril’s hand went to his beard. It was not at all as scraggly as it had started out, it had filled in nicely, he thought, and besides, he kept it neatly trimmed. “Is there some reason you ask me this? Not that it matters greatly, beards grow back, I suppose…”
   “But you’re not madly attached to it or anything, right?”
   “Not madly, no. My hand was shaky for a time after the galleys, and I did not care to carve myself bloody, but I could not afford a barber. Then I just became used to it.”
   “Good.” Bergon returned to the doorway, and thrust his head through to the corridor. “All right, come in.”
   A barber and a servant holding a can of hot water trooped in at the royse’s command. The barber made Cazaril sit, and whipped his cloth around him. Cazaril found himself soaped up before he could make remark. The servant held the basin beneath his chin as the barber, humming under his breath, went to work with his steel. Cazaril stared down cross-eyed over his nose as blobs of soapy gray and black hair splatted into the tin basin. The barber made unsettling little chirping noises, but at last smiled in satisfaction and grandly gestured the basin away. “There, my lord!” Some work with a hot towel and a cold lavender-scented tincture that stung completed his artistic effort. The royse dropped a coin into the barber’s hand that made him bow low and, murmuring compliments, retreat backwards through the door again.
   Feminine giggles sounded from the hallway. A voice, not quite low enough, whispered, “See, Iselle! He does too have a chin. Told you.”
   “Yes, you were right. Quite a nice one.”
   Iselle stalked in with her back straight, trying to be very royal in her elaborate gown from the investiture, but couldn’t keep her gravity; she looked at Cazaril and burst into laughter. At her shoulder Betriz, almost as finely dressed, was all dimples and bright brown eyes and a complex hairstyle that seemed to involve a lot of black ringlets framing her face, bouncing in a fascinating manner as she moved. Iselle’s hand went to her lips. “Five gods, Cazaril! Once you’re fetched out from behind that gray hedge, you’re not so old after all!”
   “Not old at all,” corrected Betriz sturdily.
   He had risen at the royesse’s entry, and swept them a courtly bow. His hand, unwilled, went to touch his unaccustomedly naked and cool chin. No one had offered him a mirror by which to examine the cause of all this female hilarity.
   “All ready,” reported Bergon mysteriously.
   Iselle, smiling, took Betriz’s hand. Bergon grasped Cazaril’s. Iselle struck a pose and announced, in a voice suited to a throne room, “My best-beloved and most loyal lady Betriz dy Ferrej has begged a boon of me, which I grant with all the gladness of my heart. And as you have no father now, Lord Cazaril, Bergon and I shall take his place as your liege lords. She has asked for your hand. As it pleases Us greatly that Our two most beloved servants should also love each other, be you betrothed with Our goodwill.”
   Bergon turned up his hand with Cazaril’s in it; Betriz’s descended upon it, capped by Iselle’s. The royse and royina pressed their hands together, and stood back, both grinning.
   “But, but, but,” stammered Cazaril. “But this is very wrong, Iselle—Bergon—to sacrifice this maiden to reward my gray hairs is a repugnant thing!” He did not let go of Betriz’s hand.
   “We just got rid of your gray hairs,” pointed out Iselle. She looked him over judiciously. “It’s a vast improvement, I have to agree.”
   Bergon observed, “And I must say, she doesn’t look very repulsed.”
   Betriz’s dimples were as deep as ever Cazaril had seen them, and her merry eyes gleamed up at him through her demurely sweeping lashes.
   “But… but…”
   “And anyway,” Iselle continued briskly, “I’m not sacrificing her to you as a reward for your loyalty. I’m bestowing you on her as a reward for her loyalty. So there.”
   “Oh. Oh, well, that’s better, then…” Cazaril squinted, trying to reorient his spinning mind. “But… surely there are greater lords… richer… younger, handsomer… more worthy…”
   “Yes, well, she didn’t ask for them. She asked for you. No accounting for taste, eh?” said Bergon, eyes alight.
   “And I must quibble with at least part of your estimate, Cazaril,” Betriz said breathlessly. “There are no more worthy lords than you in Chalion.” Her grip, in his, tightened.
   “Wait,” said Cazaril, feeling he was sliding down a slope of snow, tractionless. Soft, warm snow. “I have no lands, no money. How can I support a wife?”
   “I plan to make the chancellorship a salaried position,” said Iselle.
   “As the Fox has done in Ibra? Very wise, Royina, to have your principal servants’ principal loyalties be to the royacy, and not divided between crown and clan as dy Jironal’s was. Who shall you appoint to replace him? I have a few ideas—”
   “Caz aril!” Her fond exasperation made familiar cadence with his name. “Of course it’s you, who did you think I should appoint? Surely that went without saying! The duty must be yours.”

   Cazaril sat down heavily in his late barber chair, still not releasing his clutch on Betriz’s hand. “Right now?” he said faintly.
   Her chin came up. “No, no, of course not! Tonight we feast. Tomorrow will do.”
   “If you’re feeling up to it by then,” Bergon put in hastily.
   “It’s a vast task.” Wish for bread, and be handed a banquet… between those who sought to overprotect him and those who sacrificed his comfort mercilessly to their aims without a second thought, Cazaril decided he rather preferred the latter. Chancellor dy Cazaril. My lord Chancellor. His lips moved, as he shaped the syllables, and crooked up.
   “We shall do these announcements all over again publicly tonight after dinner,” said Iselle, “so dress yourself suitably, Cazaril. Bergon and I shall present the chain of office to you then, before the court. Betriz, attend upon me”—her lips curved—“in a little while.” She tucked her hand through Bergon’s arm and drew the royse out after her. The door swung shut.
   Cazaril snaked his arm around Betriz’s waist and pulled her, ruthlessly and not at all shyly, down upon his lap. She squeaked in surprise.
   “Lips, eh?” he murmured, and fastened his to hers.
   Pausing for breath some time later, she pulled her head back and happily rubbed her chin, then his. “And now your kisses do not make me itch!”


* * *

   It was late the following morning before Cazaril was at last able to seek out Umegat at the Bastard’s house. A respectful acolyte ushered him to a pair of rooms on the third floor; the tongueless groom, Daris, answered the knock and bowed Cazaril inside. Cazaril was not surprised to find him wearing the garb of a lay dedicat of the order, tidy and white. Daris rubbed his chin and gestured at Cazaril’s bare face, uttering some smiling remark that Cazaril was just as glad he could not make out. The thumbless man beckoned him through the chamber, furnished up as a sitting room, and out to a little wooden balcony, festooned with twining vines and rose geraniums in pots, overlooking the Temple Square.
   Umegat, also dressed in clean white, sat at a tiny table in the cool shade, and Cazaril was thrilled to see paper and quill and ink before him. Daris hastily brought a chair, that Cazaril might sit before Umegat could try to rise. Daris mouthed an inviting hum; Umegat interpreted an offer of hospitality, and Cazaril agreed to tea, which Daris bustled away to fetch.
   “What’s this?” Cazaril waved eagerly at the papers. “Have you your writing back?”
   Umegat grimaced. “So far, I seem to be back to age five. Would that some of the rest of me was so rejuvenated.” He tilted the page to show a labored exercise of crudely drawn letters. “I keep putting them back in my mind, and they keep falling out again. My hand has lost its cleverness for the quill—and yet I can still play the lute nearly as badly as ever! The physician insists that I am improving, and I suppose it is so, for I could not do so little as this a month ago. The words scuttle about on the page like crabs, but every so often I catch one.” He glanced up, and shrugged away his struggles. “But you! Great doings in Taryoon, were they not? Mendenal says you had a sword stuck through you.”
   “Punctured front to back,” admitted Cazaril. “But it carved out Lord Dondo and the demon, which made it altogether worth the pain. The Lady spared me from the killing fever, after.”
   Umegat glanced after Daris. “Then you got off lightly.”
   “Miraculously so.”
   Umegat leaned a little forward across the table and gazed closely into his face. “Hm. Hm. You’ve been keeping high company, I see.”
   “Have you your second sight back?” asked Cazaril, startled.
   “No. It’s just a look a man gets, that one learns to recognize.”
   Indeed. Umegat had it, too. It seemed that if a man was god-touched, and yet not pushed altogether off-balance, it left him mysteriously centered thereafter. “You have seen your god, too.” It was not a question.
   “Once or twice,” Umegat admitted.
   “How long does it take to recover?”
   “I’m not sure yet.” Umegat rubbed his lips thoughtfully, studying Cazaril. “Tell me—if you can—what you saw…?”
   It was not just the learned theologian talking shop; Cazaril saw the flash of fathomless god-hunger in the Roknari’s gray eyes. Do I look like that, when I speak of Her? No wonder men look at me strangely.
   Cazaril told the tale, starting from his precipitate departure from Cardegoss riding to the royesse’s ordering. Tea arrived, was consumed, and the cups refilled before he came to the end of it. Daris hunkered in the doorway, listening; Cazaril supposed he need not ask after the ex-groom’s discretion. When he tried to describe his gathering-in by the Lady, he became tongue-tangled. Umegat hung on his halting words, lips parted.
   “Poetry—poetry might do it,” said Cazaril. “I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.”
   “Hm,” said Umegat. “I tried to recapture the god with music, for a time, after my first… experience. I had not the gift, alas.”
   Cazaril nodded. He asked diffidently, “Is there anything you—either of you—need, that I can command? Iselle has yesterday made me chancellor of Chalion, so I suppose I can command, well, rather a lot.”
   Umegat’s brows flicked up; he favored Cazaril with a little congratulatory bow, from his seat. “That was well done of the young royina.”
   Cazaril grimaced. “I keep thinking about dead men’s boots, actually.”
   Umegat’s smile glimmered. “I understand. As for us, the Temple cares for its ex-saints reasonably well, and supplies us all that we can presently use. I like these rooms, this city, this spring air, my company. I hope the god will yet grant me an interesting task or two, before I’m done. Although, by preference, not with animals. Or royalty.”
   Cazaril made a motion of sympathy. “I suppose you knew poor Orico as well as almost anyone, except perhaps Sara.”
   “I saw him nearly every day for six years. He spoke to me most frankly, toward the end. I hope I was a consolation to him.”
   Cazaril hesitated. “For what it’s worth, I came to the conclusion that he was something of a hero.”
   Umegat nodded briefly. “So did I. In a frustrating sort of way. He was a sacrifice, surely.” He sighed. “Well, it is a particular sin to permit grief for what is gone to poison the praise for what blessings remain to us.”
   The tongueless man rose from his silent spot to take away the tea things.
   “Thank you, Daris,” said Umegat, and patted the hand that touched him briefly on the shoulder; Daris gathered up the cups and plates and padded off.
   Cazaril stared curiously after him. “Have you known him long?”
   “About twenty years.”
   “Then he was not just your assistant in the menagerie…” Cazaril lowered his voice. “Was he martyred back then?”
   “No. Not yet.”
   “Oh.”
   Umegat smiled. “Don’t look so glum, Lord Cazaril. We get better. That was yesterday. This is today. I shall ask his permission to tell you the tale of it sometime.”
   “I should be honored with his confidence.”
   “All is well, and if it’s not, then at least each day brings us closer to our god.”
   “I had noticed that. I had a little trouble tracking time, the first few days after… after I saw the Lady. Time, and scale, both altered out of reckoning.”
   A light knock sounded upon the chamber door. Daris emerged from the other room and went to admit a white-smocked young dedicat who held a book in her hand.
   “Ah.” Umegat brightened. “It is my reader. Make your bow to the Lord Chancellor, Dedicat.” He added in explanation, “They send a delinquent dedicat to read to me for an hour a day, as a light punishment for small infractions of the house rules. Have you decided what rule you mean to break tomorrow, girl?”
   The dedicat grinned sheepishly. “I’m thinking, Learned Umegat.”
   “Well if you run out of ideas, I will harken back to my youth and see if I can’t remember a few more.”
   The dedicat tipped the book toward Cazaril. “I thought I would be sent to read dull theology to the divine, but instead he wanted this book of tales.”
   Cazaril glanced over the volume, an Ibran import judging by the printer’s mark, with interest.
   “It’s a fine conceit, “ said Umegat. “The author follows a group of travelers to a pilgrimage shrine, and has each one tell his or her tale in turn. Very, ah, holy.”
   “Actually, my lord,” the dedicat whispered, “some of them are very lewd.”
   “I see I must dust off Ordol’s sermon on the lessons of the flesh. I have promised the dedicat time off from the Bastard’s penances for her blushes. I fear she believes me.” Umegat smiled.

   “I, ah… should be very pleased to borrow that book, when you’re finished with it,” Cazaril said hopefully.
   “I’ll have it sent up to you, my lord.”
   Cazaril made his farewells. He recrossed the five-sided Temple Square and headed uphill, but turned aside before the Zangre came in sight and made his way to Provincar dy Baocia’s town palace. The blocky old stone building resembled Jironal Palace, though much smaller, with no windows on its lower floor, and its next floor’s casements protected by wrought-iron grilles. It had been reopened not only for its lord and lady but also the old Provincara and Lady Ista, who had arrived from Valenda. Full to bursting, its former sullen empty silence was turned to bustle. Cazaril stated his rank and business to a bowing porter, and was whisked inside without question or delay.
   The porter led him to a high sunny chamber at the back of the house. Here he found Dowager Royina Ista sitting out on a little iron-railed balcony overlooking the small herb garden and stable mews. She dismissed her attendant woman and gestured Cazaril to the vacated chair, almost knee to knee with her. Ista’s dun hair was neatly braided today, wreathing her head; both her face and her dress seemed somehow crisper, more clearly defined than Cazaril had ever seen them before.
   “This is a pleasant place,” Cazaril observed, easing himself down in the chair.
   “Yes, I like this room. It is the one I had when I was a girl, when my father brought us up to the capital with him, which was not often. Best of all, I cannot see the Zangre from it.” She gazed down into the domestic square of garden, embroidered with green, protected and contained.
   “You came to the banquet there last night.” He had only been able to exchange a few formal words with her in that company, Ista merely congratulating him on his chancellorship and his betrothal, and departing early “You looked very well, too, I must say. I could see Iselle was gratified.”
   She inclined her head. “I eat there to please her. I do not care to sleep there.”
   “I suppose the ghosts are still about. I cannot see them now, to my great relief.”
   “Nor I, with sight or second sight, but I feel them as a chill in the walls. Or perhaps it’s just the memory of them that chills me.” She rubbed her arms as if to warm them. “I abhor the Zangre.”
   “I understand the poor ghosts much better now than when they first terrified me,” said Cazaril diffidently. “I thought their exile and erosion was a rejection by the gods, at first, a damnation, but now I know it for a mercy. When the souls are taken up, they remember themselves… the minds possess their lives all whole, all at once, as the gods do, with nearly the terrible clarity that matter remembers itself. For some… for some that heaven would be as unbearable as any hell, and so the gods release them to forgetfulness.”
   “Forgetfulness. That smudged oblivion seems a very heaven to me now. I pray to be such a ghost, I think.”
   I fear it is a mercy you shall be denied. Cazaril cleared his throat. “You know the curse is lifted off of Iselle and Bergon, and all, and banished out of Chalion?”
   “Yes. Iselle has told me of it, to the limit of her understanding, but I knew it when it happened. My ladies were dressing me to go down to the Daughter’s Day morning prayers. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear or feel, but it was as though a fog had lifted from my mind. I did not realize how closely it had cloaked me round, like a clammy mist on the skin of my soul, till it was lifted. I was sorry then, for I thought it meant you had died.”
   “Died indeed, but the Lady put me back into the world. Well, into my body. My friend Palli would have it that She put me back in upside down.” His smile flickered.
   Ista looked away. “The curse’s lifting made my pain more clear, and yet more distant. It felt very strange.”
   He cleared his throat. “You were right, Lady Ista, about the prophecy. The three deaths. I was wrong with my marriage scheme, wrong and determined to be so, because I was afraid. Your way seemed too hard. And yet it came right despite myself, in the end, by the Lady’s grace.”
   She nodded. “I would have done it myself, if I could have. My sacrifice was evidently not deemed acceptable.” Bitterness tinged her voice.
   “It was not a matter of—that’s not the reason,” protested Cazaril. “Well, it is but it isn’t. It has to do with the shape of your soul, not its worthiness. You have to make a cup of yourself, to receive that pouring out. You are a sword. You were always a sword. Like your mother and your daughter, too—steel spines run in the women of your family. I realize now why I never saw saints, before. The world does not crash upon their wills like waves upon a rock, or part around them like the wake of a ship. Instead they are supple, and swim through the world as silently as fishes.”
   Her brows rose at him, though whether in agreement, disagreement, or some polite irony he was not sure.
   “Where will you go now?” he asked her. “Now that you are better, that is.”
   She shrugged. “My mother grows frail. I suppose we shall reverse chairs, and I shall attend upon her in the castle of Valenda as she attended upon me. I should prefer to go somewhere that I have never been before. Not Valenda, not Cardegoss. Someplace with no memories.”
   He could not argue with this. He thought on Umegat, not exactly her spiritual superior, but so experienced in loss and woe as to have recovery down to nearly a routine. Ista had yet another twenty years to find her way to a balance like that. At about the age Ista was now, retrieving the broken body of his friend from whatever episode of horrors had shattered him, perhaps Umegat had railed and wailed as heart-rendingly as she had, or cursed the gods as coldly as her frozen silences. “I shall have to have you meet my friend Umegat,” he told Ista. “He was the saint given to preserve Orico. Ex-saint, now, as you and I are, too. I think… I think you and he could have some interesting conversations.”
   She opened her hand, warily, neither encouraging this idea nor denying its possibility. Cazaril resolved to pursue their introduction, later.
   Attempting to turn her thoughts to happier matters, he asked after Iselle’s coronation, which Ista and the proud and eager Provincara had arrived in Cardegoss just in time to attend. He’d so far asked some four or five people to describe it to him, but he hadn’t grown tired of the accounts yet. She grew animated for a little, her delight in her daughter’s victory softening her face and illuminating her eyes. The fate of Teidez lay between them untouched, as if by mutual assent. This was not the day to press those tender wounds, lest they break and bleed anew; some later, stronger hour would be time enough to speak of the lost boy.
   At length, he bowed his head and made to bid her good day. Ista, suddenly urgent, leaned forward to touch him, for the first time, upon his hand.
   “Bless me, Cazaril, before you go.”
   He was taken aback. “Lady, I am no more saint now than you are, and surely not a god, to call down blessings at my will.” And yet… he wasn’t a royesse, either, but he had borne the proxy for one to Ibra, and made binding contract in her name. Lady of Spring, if ever I served You, redeem Your debt to me now. He licked his lips. “But I will try.”
   He leaned forward, and placed his hand on Ista’s white brow. He did not know where the words came from, but they rose to his lips nonetheless.
   “This is a true prophecy, as true as yours ever were. When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sundered, but shall be the prize of the gods’ gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.”
   He sat back and shut his mouth abruptly, as a surge of terror ran through him. Is it well, is it ill, am I a fool?
   Ista’s eyes filled with tears that did not fall. Her hand, cupped upward upon her knee, grew still. She ducked her head in clumsy acceptance, as awkwardly as a child taking its first step. In a shaken voice she said, “You do that very well, Cazaril, for a man who claims to be an amateur.”
   He swallowed, nodded back, smiled, took his leave, and fled into the street. As he turned up the hill, his stride lengthened despite the slope. His ladies would be waiting.

Paladin of Souls

Lois McMaster Bujold


Chalion

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28

Paladin of Souls
by Lois McMaster Bujold

   For Sylvia Kelso, syntax wrangler and Ista partisan first class