Paladin of Souls

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  "Oh, better—she smirks!"

  "I do not."

  "Poets speak of hope in ladies' smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say." Somehow, his thumb was massaging her palm again, tracing the subtle muscles of her hand. It felt wonderful. She wished he would rub her shoulders, her feet, her neck, her everything-that-hurt. And everything hurt.

  "I thought you said Arhys was the great seducer in the family." She tried to muster the energy to take her hand back again, and failed.

  "Not at all. He's never seduced a woman in his life. They leapt on him from ambush all by themselves. Not without cause, I grant you." He smiled, briefly. "There is this, about being the sparring partner of the best swordsman in Caribastos. I always lost. But if ever I meet the third best swordsman in Caribastos, he's going to be in very deep trouble. Arhys was always better at all things we turned our hands to. But there is one thing that I am quite certain I can do that he cannot."

  It was the fault of the hand massage; it lulled her. She said unthinkingly, "What?"

  "Fall in love with you. Sweet Ista."

  She jerked back. She had heard that endearment before, but not on those lips. "Don't call me that."

  "Bitter Ista?" His brows climbed. "Cranky Ista? Cross, ill-tempered, cantankerous Ista?"

  She snorted; he relaxed, and his lips quirked again. "Well, I can no doubt learn to adjust my vocabulary."

  "Lord Illvin, be serious."

  "Certainly," he said at once. "As you command, Royina." He bowed slightly. "I am old enough to have many regrets. I've made my share of mistakes, some"—he grimaced—"hideous indeed, as you well know. But it was the little, easy things—the kisses I did not give, and the love I did not speak, because there was no time, no place—and then, no chance . . . Surprisingly sharp sorrows those are, for their size. I think all our chances grow narrow, tonight. So I shall reduce my regrets— however brief—by one, at least..."

  He leaned closer. Fascinated, she did not retreat. Somehow, that long arm had found its way around her aching shoulders. He folded her in. He was quite tall, she reflected; if she didn't bend her head back, she was going to end up with her nose squashed to his breastbone. She looked up.

  His lips tasted of soot, and salt sweat, and the longest day of her life. Well, and horsemeat, but at least it was fresh horsemeat. His dark eyes glittered between narrowed lids as her arms found their way around that ridged torso and pressed him inward. What was it she had snarled to dy Cabon—mimicking above what is desired below . . . ?

  Some minutes later—too many? too few?—he lifted his head again and set her a little from him, as though to look upon her without having to cross his eyes. His slight smile was altogether drained of irony now, though not of satisfaction. She blinked and stepped back.

  Liss, sitting cross-legged against the parapet on the opposite side of the platform, was staring up with her mouth open. The two soldiers weren't even pretending to be watching Jokonans. Their riveted expressions were of men contemplating a daunting feat they had no desire to emulate, such as swallowing fire, or being the first to charge up a scaling ladder.

  "Time," Illvin murmured, "is where you take it. It will not linger for you."

  "That is so," whispered Ista.

  She had to give his dalliance this much credit; the stones seemed suddenly a much less attractive solution to her plight. That had been his intent, she had no doubt.

  A dark violet splash of light sparked past her inner vision, and Ista's head turned to follow it. From somewhere below, an outraged cry rang out. She sighed, too wearied to pursue the mystery. "I don't even want to look."

  Illvin's head, too, had turned at the cry. By his lack of further craning, he also shared her surfeit of horrors. But then he looked back at her, his eyes narrowing. "You looked around before we heard anything," he noted.

  "Yes. I see the sorcerous attacks as flashes of light in my inner vision. Like little bolts of lightning, flying from source to target, or like streaking fire-arrows. I can't tell what their effect will be just by seeing them, though; they all look much the same."

  "Can you tell sorcerers from ordinary men just by looking? I can't."

  "Oh, yes. Both Cattilara's demon and Foix's appear to me as shapes of shadow and light within the boundaries of their own souls, which, since they are both living persons, are bounded by their bodies. Foix's demon still retains the shape of a bear. Arhys's ragged soul trails him, as though it struggles to keep up."

  "How far away can you tell if a person is a sorcerer?"

  She shrugged. "As far as my eye can see, I suppose. No, farther than that: for my inner eye sees spirit shapes right through matter, if I pay attention, and concentrate, and perhaps close my outer eyes to reduce the confusion. Tents, walls, bodies, all are transparent to the gods, and to god-sight."

  "What about a sorcerer's sight?"

  "I am not sure. Foix seemed not to have much, before I shared mine, but his elemental is an inexperienced one."

  "Huh." He stood a moment, looking increasingly abstracted. "Come over here." He took her hand and towed her to the western side of the tower, overlooking the walnut grove. "Do you suppose that you could give an exact tally of Joen's sorcerers, if you tried? In her camp, from here?"

  Ista blinked. "I don't know. I could try."

  The trees' feet were now wading in gray shadow, though their very tops still glowed golden green in the last of the light. Campfires twinkled through the leaves, and a suggestion of the pale squares of many tents. Men's voices carried enough to be heard up on the battlements, although not well enough to make out what they said in the Roknari tongue. On the far side of the grove, the cluster of big green tents, gaudy with pennants, began to glow like verdant lanterns from the lamps being set within them.

  Ista took a long breath to try to compose her mind. She extended her perceptions, closing her eyes. If she could sense Joen or Sordso from here, could they sense her? And if Joen could sense her . . . she took another breath, banished the frightening thought, and determinedly uncurled her soul once more.

  Upwards of five hundred faint soul-lights moved like fireflies among the trees, the Jokonan soldiers and camp followers busy about their ordinary tasks. A smattering of souls glowed with a stronger, much more violent and disrupted light. Yes, there were the threads, the snakes, wavering through the air from those scattered whorls to converge all in one dark, disturbing spot. Even as she watched, one line crossed another as their possessors moved in space, passing like two strands of insubstantial yarn that did not knot or tangle.

  "Yes, I can see them," she told Illvin. "Some are snubbed up near to Joen, some are all spread out across the camp." Her lips moved as she made her count. "Six hug the command tents, twelve are arranged near the front of the grove, nearest to Porifors. Eighteen altogether."

  She peeked, turned half around toward the river and the Jokonans' second camp investing the town, and closed her eyes once more. Then turned fully around, toward the bivouac of the third column that had set up along the ridge to the east of the castle, cutting the road to Oby and commanding the valley upstream. "All the sorcerers seem to be in the main camp near Joen. I see no ribbons reaching to the other two camps. Yes, of course. She would want all her sorcerers as close under her eye as possible."

  She completed her turn and opened her eyes again. "Most of the sorcerers seem to be sheltered in tents. One is standing under a tree, looking this way." She could not see his physical body, through the leaves, but she could tell which tree it was.

  "Hm," said Illvin, staring over her shoulder. "Can Foix tell which is which? What man is a sorcerer, what man is not?"

  "Oh, yes. I mean, he can now. He saw the sorcery light with me when the cups broke—and again, standing on the wall when the rest of it began." She glanced warily back over her shoulder at Illvin's tense, closed expression. His eyes were tight with thought, some notion that did not seem to give him much pleasure. "What are you thinking?"

  "I am thinking . . . that by y
our testimony Arhys appears to be immune to sorcery, but sorcerers do not appear to be immune to steel. As Cattilara proved upon poor Umerue. If Arhys could close with them, just them, and yet somehow avoid the other fifteen hundred Jokonans around Porifors . . ." He drew a breath, and wheeled. "Liss."

  She jerked upright. "Lord Illvin?"

  "Go and find my lord brother, and ask him to attend upon us here. Fetch Foix, too, if he is to be found."

  She nodded, a bit wide-eyed, scrambled up, and scuffed rapidly down the tower's turning stairs. Illvin stared out over Prince Sordso and Princess Joen's camp as if memorizing every detail. Ista leaned uneasily by his side, studying that profile suddenly gone distant and cool.

  He looked back and smiled down at her in apology. "I am seized by a thought. I fear you will find me a rather distractible man."

  It wasn't how she would describe him, but she smiled briefly back in attempted reassurance.

  All too soon, footsteps sounded on the stairs. Arhys emerged into the luminous twilight, followed by Liss and Foix. Arhys looked scarcely more corpselike than anyone else in Porifors at present, but his face was spared the usual smears of sweat. Foix's stolidity masked a deep depletion. He had spent the afternoon clumsily trying to undo sorceries all over the castle, to little effect. Dy Cabon had named the effort fundamentally futile, for various theological reasons that no one stayed to listen to, and yet had begged Foix's aid himself when faced with the rising demands of the sick.

  "Arhys, come here," said Illvin. "Look at this." His brother joined him at the western parapet. "Five gods attest we know this ground. Royina Ista says there are but eighteen sorcerers in Joen's pack altogether. A dozen lie in the front of the camp, along there . . ."—his hand swept in an arc—"six more in the command tents, a rather better guarded area, I suspect. One big circle could pass round them all, if it were rapid enough. How many sorcerers do you think you could excise with steel?"

  Arhys's brows rose. "As many as I could close with, I suppose. But I doubt they would just stand there while we galloped up to them. As soon as they thought to drop our horses, we'd be afoot."

  "What if we attacked in the dark? You said you see better in the dark these days than other men."

  "Hm." Arhys's gaze upon the grove intensified.

  "Royina Ista." Illvin turned urgently to her—and where was all that Sweet Ista now? "What happens when a leashed sorcerer is slain?"

  Ista frowned. Surely the question was rhetorical. "You've seen it yourself. The demon, together with whatever pieces of its mount's soul it has digested, jumps to whatever new host it can reach. The body dies. What the fate of the remaining parts of the person's soul may be, I do not know."

  "And one other thing," Illvin said, excitement leaking into his voice. "The leash is broken. Or at least—Cattilara's demon broke from control at Umerue's death. More: at that moment, the free demon became Joen's rebellious enemy, dedicated to flight from her as fast as possible. How many demons could Joen suffer to have cut away from her array—jumping randomly into unprepared hosts, or even turning on her—before she was forced to retreat in disorder?"

  "If she doesn't have others in reserve, ready to harness like a fresh team of horses," said Arhys.

  "No," said Ista slowly, "I don't think she can. All must be there, tied in her net, or they will fly—away from each other if not from her. By Umerue's testimony, it took Joen three years to develop this array, to bring each sorcerer-slave to some apex of carefully selected, stolen skills. Without another visit to whatever back door of hell her master demon can unlock, I doubt she can replace them. And all she'll get at first is a spate of mindless, formless, ignorant elementals. We know she spills them, too; it cannot be a well-controlled process, not when dealing with the essence of disorder itself. Although . . . Cattilara's demon fears recapture; if that is not just some filial obsession of Umerue's, it implies recapture is possible. I don't know how quickly Joen might effect it."

  "With several freed demons flying in all directions, it would be more difficult, I should guess," said Illvin.

  Arhys leaned his elbow on the stone wall and eyed his brother. "You are thinking of a sortie. A sorcerer-hunt."

  "Aye."

  "It cannot be done. I am certain to take wounds—which Catti would be forced to bear."

  Illvin looked away. "I was thinking the royina could switch you back to me. For the occasion, as it were."

  Ista gasped protest. "Do you realize what that would mean? Arhys's injuries would be yours."

  "Yes, well ..." Illvin swallowed. "But then Arhys could go on for quite a bit more than his enemies would guess. Perhaps physicians or women could stay at my side, binding up the leaks as they spring. Buying extra minutes."

  Arhys frowned. "And then . . . what? At your last gasp, break the link? Return all my wounds to me at once?"

  Ista tried not to let her voice emerge as a shriek. "Leaving you trapped in a hacked-apart body that can neither die nor heal?"

  Arhys said vaguely, "I really don't have all that much feeling in my body anymore. . . . Maybe I might not be trapped. Maybe"—his ravishing gray eyes rose to meet Ista's, and the sudden light in them terrified her down to her bones—"I might be released."

  "To the death of nothingness? No!" said Ista.

  "Indeed not!" said Illvin. "I mean the sortie to swing round and return to Porifors. The others would ride to guard you, and clear your way to the sorcerers. And make sure you got back."

  "Mm." Arhys stared down into the dusk. "How many men do you think it would take?"

  "A hundred would be best, but we do not have a hundred. Fifty might make it."

  "We do not have fifty, either. Illvin, we do not have twenty, not mounted."

  Illvin straightened up from the parapet. The excitement drained from his face. "Twenty is too few."

  "Too few to ride out? Or to ride back?"

  "If too few to ride back, then too few to ride out. I could not ask it of any man if I were not riding myself, and I would perforce be detained in here."

  "Only in a sense," said Arhys. He was looking increasingly, disturbingly, intent. "We are dying here by the hour. Worse—Lord dy Oby will ride apace to our relief. He was never laggard, but for the sake of his daughter he will brook no delay. Without warning of Joen's demonic deceits, he will race his troops into this trap."

  "He cannot be here before day after tomorrow, at the soonest," said Illvin.

  "I wouldn't be so sure. If today's courier was taken by the Jokonan screen and failed to arrive at Oby, he'll know at once, for I know the warnings about the ambush of Foix and the divine reached him. The fortress of Oby is already well aroused." Arhys's frown deepened. "Also, the longer we wait, the worse condition we will all be in."

  "That would certainly appear to be true," Illvin conceded.

  "And," his voice lowered, "the worse condition I will be in. Our men are dying now without a blade being lifted or a quarrel being fired. By nightfall tomorrow, at this rate, Sordso's forces will be able to walk unopposed into a castle manned only by corpses, unmoving save for one. And I will be left facing the same enemy—alone and unsupported."

  "Ah," said Illvin, sounding shaken.

  "Had you not thought it through? I'm surprised. Royina"—he turned to Ista—"I am sundered now. Freeing me from this body will not change that state. Let it be done while . . . while there is still some honor in it. Some use."

  "Arhys, you cannot ask this of me."

  "Yes. I can." His voice fell further. "And you cannot refuse me."

  Ista was trembling, both at what he proposed and at what he envisioned. That solitary fate was, she had to admit, the logical progression of events.

  "Arhys, no, this is too fey," protested Illvin.

  "Fey is a man who looks forward to death. I look back upon mine. I am beyond fey, I think. If this hazard is to be cast at all, it must be soon. In the dark before dawn."

  "This night?" said Illvin. Even he, who had advanced the plan, sounded appalled at
its sudden acceleration.

  "This very night. We've been shoved most forcefully onto the defensive, and the Jokonans do not look to us, in our present shock, to turn it about. If ever the gods gave me the gift for finding the moment on the field, I swear to you, this is one."

  Illvin's lips parted, but no sound came out.

  Arhys smiled slightly and turned again to view the walnut grove in the fading light. Though perhaps not fading for him, Ista was reminded. "So, how would I find these sorcerers and not waste time butchering ordinary men?"

  Foix cleared his throat. "I can see them."

  Behind them, sitting small and cross-legged by the wall again, Liss caught her breath.

  Arhys looked across at Foix. "Would you ride out with me, dy Gura? It's a good pairing. I think you are less vulnerable to these sorcerous attacks than any other man here."

  "I ... let me look at the ground." Foix, too, advanced to the battlement and leaned upon it, staring down at the camp. Ista saw by the way his eyes opened and closed that he marshaled his second sight to study this challenge.

  Arhys turned to Ista. "Royina, can you manage this thing? Neither Illvin nor I will be able to speak to you—we must rely on your judgment when to make or break our links."

  lam every kind of afraid. Physically. Magically. Morally. But mostly the last. "I think I could cut Illvin free of you, yes. What about Cattilara?"

  "I would spare her," said Arhys. "Let her sleep."

  "To wake a widow? I am not sure that is a betrayal she could ever forgive. She may be young and foolish, but she is not a child now, and will never be a child again. In any case, she must be allowed to wake and eat, that she may lend you strength, and not fail through no fault of her own."

  Illvin said, "I fear if she has any hint of this, she will grow quite frenzied. And I doubt her demon will be on our side either."

  The stars were coming out, overhead. On the western horizon, glowing pink feathers of cloud were fading to gray. So much indifferent beauty, in the world of matter . . .

  "I must take thought for Cattilara," said Ista. It seems no one else is willing to.

  From the deepening shadows, Foix spoke: "Lord Arhys, if you decide to ride out, I will go with you. If the royina will release me to your command."