Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Dy Cabon and Illvin looked equally sick; Foix had hardly any expression at all. Dy Cabon said, “You mean Princess Joen somehow pulls demons from their mounts while the mounts still live? Separates them from the victim souls as the saint of Rauma did?”

  The demon’s lips curved up in an unpleasant smile. “Exactly the reverse. For Joen, the purpose was binding, not separation. When we’d fed enough, she pulled us out, tearing the souls apart. Taking what she desired for us, leaving the rest as waste. A process equally painful to both parties, we can assure you, though it helped keep us off-balance and servile, we suppose.”

  Ista was uncertain why the demon had suddenly grown so forthcoming, but she determined to press on while its mood lasted. “The old demon,” she repeated. “What is this?”

  “Ah. Joen’s legacy,” said the demon. It spoke now, Ista thought, in the scholar’s voice, precise and dry, its Ibran of a pure native accent from somewhere in central Chalion, not at all like Cattilara’s softer northern speech. Nor did the young marchess speak in quite such rounded periods. “Shall we tell you all the tale of it? The enemies of our enemy are no friends to us. And yet, why not? We know what awaits us, why shouldn’t you? Fools.” This last was delivered in an oddly dispassionate tone.

  It waited for the body to supply it with breath again, and continued, “In the days of the Golden General’s glory, men swarmed in from the Archipelago, seeking advancement in his court and spoils on his battlefields. Among them was an old, old sorcerer, who had long plied his demon magic in the islands among the Quadrenes, passing among them subtly and uncaught. His demon was older still, dozens of lives old. The chaos and disorder of the promised war attracted them like perfume. It was a vast mistake, for the Lion of Roknar was beloved of the Father Himself, and possessed many god-gifts, among them the inner sight.

  “The old sorcerer was perceived, accused, convicted, and burned. In its immense accumulated craft, the ancient demon jumped from its dying mount and evaded the Quadrene divines’ precautions. Yet it could not jump so far as to reach safety, so it chose for its new mount a person whom the Golden General would not burn—his three-year-old daughter, Joen.”

  “Princess Joen has been a sorceress all these years?” cried dy Cabon in astonishment.

  “Not quite.” The demon smiled briefly, bitterly, with Cattilara’s lips. “The Golden General was wild with rage and grief. He turned to his god in prayer, and yet another gift was granted to him. The Father gave it to him to encapsulate the demon, to put it to sleep within the little girl. It was the Lion’s intention, then, when Chalion was conquered, to secretly seize and bring back a saint of the Bastard, if any such could be found, to excise the demon safely from his daughter according to the forbidden Quintarian rites. And then he rode off to his war.

  “But by Roya Fonsa’s great work of sacrifice, the Lion of Roknar died before he could accomplish his aims, or return. The disunited princedoms settled into another generation of border war with the Quintarian royacies. And the sealed demon waited for its mount’s death, that it might be released again into the world of men. For fifty years, it waited.

  “Then, some three years past, something happened. The capsule broke open, releasing the demon into Joen. But not into the malleable child the demon had chosen. Into the harsh, determined, embittered, and embattled woman.”

  “How?” asked dy Cabon.

  “Yes,” said Illvin. “Why hold fifty years, then fail? Unless it was set so …”

  “I know how,” said Ista, her mind burning with cold satisfaction. “I believe I could name the very day and hour. I will tell you in a moment. But hush, let it go on. Then what?”

  The demon’s eyes narrowed at her in something like respect. “Joen was in a desperate quandary, then. She was co-regent for Prince Sordso with her two closest enemies, the general of Jokona and her late husband’s brother. Sordso was a surly young sot who hated them all. The general and his uncle were conspiring to seize Sordso and put his uncle on the throne of Jokona in his place.”

  “Ah,” said Illvin in a disconsolate tone. “That was when I’d wanted to strike at Jokona. What excellent timing it might have been, just as their palace coup began … oh, well.”

  “Joen was frantic,” said the demon. “She believed—or convinced herself—that the old demon was a legacy from her great father, given to her in secret to rise up in just such an unhappy hour and save his grandson from traitors. So she kept it in secret and began learning from it. The old demon was pleased to have such an apt pupil, and taught her everything, thinking it would soon turn the tables and mount her. It underestimated the iron strength of her will, tempered through four decades of swallowed rage. It became even more her slave.”

  “Yes,” whispered Ista. “I follow that.”

  “Joen’s co-regents were her first enemies to earn her attention. Easy because so intimate, we suppose. The uncle, well, he died quietly. The general underwent a subtler fate, and soon became Joen’s fondest supporter in all things.”

  “Joen is a Quadrene, if fallen into blasphemy by their lights,” said dy Cabon, his face knotting with consternation. “But a bad Quadrene is not the same thing as a good Quintarian. She can’t possess the correct theological background to handle any elemental safely, let alone a troop of them.”

  “Indeed,” breathed Ista, “not.”

  The demon-Catti continued, “Her leashed demons soon became more to her than salvation for Sordso; they became her joy. At last, at last, she could exert her will and force a compliance that smiled as it hurried to obey. Her family was not last, but first to fall to her binding. Except for Sordso.”

  The demon’s voice and language changed again. She took me when I refused to be wed to a Quintarian bastard lord, and her eyes shone with triumph as she did so. All, all to do exactly as she said, always, down to the smallest detail. Except for Sordso, her golden cub. Oh, it cheers my heart even in this living death to know that she finally took my brother Sordso. Catti’s—Umerue’s—lips drew back in a fierce grin. I warned him not to defy her. Did he listen? Of course not. Hah!

  “Cattilara said you were sent to suborn Porifors,” said Ista to the demon. “Hence, I suppose, the inclusion of the courtesan …”

  Illvin’s expression, across the bed from her, was a study in surmise, a complicated amalgam of memory, regret, and horror. Ista wondered if these half-digested souls would all run together into one mind, in time—or would they always be a little separate?

  “Was it Illvin or Arhys whom your mother instructed you to bind to yourself?” Ista asked. “Or both?”

  The Umerue-lips’ smile softened. Lord Illvin. He seemed pretty enough at first. But then we saw Arhys … Why settle for second-best, for second-in-command, and all that complicated plot of usurpation and revolt to follow, when we might so simply and pleasantly take Porifors from the top down? It added in Ibran, “Lord Arhys, yes,” and “Arhys. Yes. Mm.” And, sighing in no identifiable tongue, “Ah.”

  “It seems it was unanimous,” murmured Illvin dryly. “The servant girl, the princess, the courtesan, and I doubt not the scholar, too. All up in smoke at the first sight of him. I wonder if that bird was female as well? If so, it would probably have flown to his finger. And so Joen’s plot was put in disarray by an altogether older sorcery than demon magic.” His brow wrinkled half in amusement, half in pain. “Fortunately for me.” All pain, now. For a moment, his deep underlying exhaustion floated very near his surface, as if the pull of the whole world bowed his back. Then his dark eyes glittered, and he straightened. “So how was this master demon released from its long prison? You said you knew, Royina.”

  “I guess, at least. It was the timing—do you not see it? Three years ago on the Daughter’s Day, the Golden General’s death curse was pulled from Chalion, and from my House: all his spilled, perverted god-gifts swept up and taken back by the gods through their chosen saint. And if all was retrieved that day—it must have included the power of the encapsulation.”

/>   Illvin met dy Cabon’s eyes; the divine gave a reflective nod.

  Ista mused, “I wonder, if Arvol and Ias and I had succeeded in breaking the curse twenty years ago, would Joen have been granted her demon two decades sooner? And which of them would have been ascendant then?”

  Dy Cabon stared down at Cattilara with an expression of arrested theological curiosity. “I wonder if the actions of this same Roknari master sorcerer would account for the outbreak of elementals that Chalion suffered in Fonsa’s day … ?” He shook off the distractions of historical theory, as it perhaps occurred to him that the outbreak they faced now was suddenly all too present and practical.

  Why is the creature telling us all this? Ista wondered. To create fear and disorder among her little company? To spread its own distress? She glanced around at Foix’s stolidity, dy Cabon’s thoughtfulness, Illvin’s shrewd concentration. If that was the plan, it wasn’t working. Maybe it had simply stolen enough humanity by now to enjoy complaining to an attentive audience. Maybe, with all hope of flight lost, at some last gasp and despite its preferred solitary nature, it sought allies.

  The door opened; startled, Ista snapped around. Lord Arhys entered and gave her a respectful nod. She was glad to see he was mail-clad again. He, at least, would not be overheated by his armor. He was followed by maids with trays, a welcome sight, and Goram, considerably recovered, with a pile of Illvin’s clothing and war gear.

  Ista’s party seized on the contents of the trays without ceremony. Arhys strode to the bedside and stared down at his wife, his face bleak. The demon looked back, but said nothing. Ista hoped that wasn’t Cattilara’s longing leaking into in its eyes. Then she wondered if her own eyes had looked like that, resting on him.

  “Is she awake?” Arhys flexed his hand in puzzlement. “How then do I … ?”

  “Cattilara sleeps,” Ista told him. “We gave her demon access to her mouth, that it might speak. Which it has.”

  “What’s arrived out there, Arhys?” demanded Illvin. He alternated downing bites of meat wrapped in bread and swallowing gulps of cold tea with being dressed by his groom.

  “About fifteen hundred Jokonan soldiers, my scouts estimate. Five hundred in each column. My two scouts who made it back, that is. Since the ring of besiegers is now closed around Porifors, I despair of the other dozen. I have never lost so many scouts before.”

  “Siege engines?” Illvin asked around a mouthful of bread, thrusting a leg into a boot of his own held by the kneeling Goram. The lost manservant’s boots were tossed aside. Dead man’s shoes? No telling now.

  “None reported. Supply wagons, yes, but no more.”

  “Huh.”

  Arhys glanced at Ista. She did not know what expression was on her face, but he attempted reassurance. “Porifors has withstood sieges before, Royina. The town walls are secured as well—I have two hundred men of my own down there, and half the townsmen are former garrison soldiers. There are tunnels between us to shift reinforcements. What was it, Illvin, fifteen years ago that the Fox of Ibra sent up an assault of three thousands? We held them for half a month, till dy Caribastos and dy Tolnoxo—the present provincar’s father—relieved us.”

  “I don’t think it’s siege engines that Jokona sends against us now,” said Illvin. “I think it’s sorcerers.” He supplied his brother with a blunt synopsis of the demon’s testimony. As he spoke, Goram, pale but resolute, expertly combed back his hair and bound it in a tight knot at his nape, then shook out his mail coat ready to don.

  “If this madwoman Joen truly drags a dozen or more sorcerers on leashes,” Illvin concluded, ducking into his mail, “you may be sure she means to let them slip against us. If not for revenge for her lost daughter, then for a blow against Chalion to turn the whole line of attack that Marshal dy Palliar plans against Borasnen. An early strike, and hard; and if successful, to be followed by a sweep into north-central Chalion before Iselle and Bergon’s forces are properly mustered … that’s the way I’d do it, if I were the Jokonans. I mean, if I were only mad, and not stupid.”

  Arhys grinned briefly. “I can scarcely guess what Sordso’s staff officers are like at present.”

  “Cooperative,” said Ista blackly. “Of one mind.”

  Illvin grimaced, and at Goram’s silent tap held out a forearm for the groom to buckle on his vambrace.

  “Arhys,” Ista continued urgently. “Despite your strange state, you have no inner sight, correct?”

  “Nothing like what you describe, no, Royina. If anything, my sight seems less than before. Not blurred or dimmed, but drained of color. Except that now I see better at night; almost the same as in the day.”

  “So you did not see, did not perceive, the strike that Prince Sordso made upon you, when you clashed on the road?”

  “No … what did you see?”

  “That deep light that marks demon magic to my inner eye. A searing bolt of something. Or anyway, it was clear that Sordso thought it was going to be a searing bolt of something. But it passed through you harmlessly, as though you weren’t even there.”

  They both looked to dy Cabon, who opened his plump hands in uncertainty. “In a sense, he isn’t there. Not as live souls are, nor even as demons are. The true sundered ghosts are divorced from all realities, the world of matter and the world of spirit both.”

  “Is he, then, immune to sorcery?” began Ista. “And yet it is sorcery that sustains him now … Learned, I do not understand.”

  “I will give it thought—”

  A tangled mess of violet lines of light abruptly appeared throughout the room, flared, and vanished. Foix jumped. A moment later, so did everyone else, as vessels of tea or wine or wash water tipped or cracked or shattered. Illvin’s clay cup cleaved in his hand as he was lifting it to his lips, and he danced backward to avoid the splash down his gray-and-gold tabard.

  “Joen’s sorcerers are now in place, it seems,” said Ista flatly.

  Foix swung around in wide-eyed dismay; within him, his bear shadow was on its feet, snarling. “What was the purpose of that? A warning? If they can do that, why not burst our bellies or our skulls and have it over with?”

  Dy Cabon raised a shaking hand. “Free demons cannot slay directly—”

  “The Bastard’s own death demon does,” said Ista. “I have seen it do so.”

  “That is a very special case. Free demons, those escaped into the realm of matter … well, they might try to slay directly, but—death opens a soul to the gods. Whether the soul chooses to advance through that door at that moment or not is a matter of will, but in that instant it opens both ways. And the demon is vulnerable to recapture.”

  “And so they jump away when their mount is slain …” said Foix.

  “Yes, but using magic to slay also creates a link between sorcerer and victim. The effort and the backwash are supposed to be very hard on the sorcerer, as well.” He paused thoughtfully. “Of course, if a sorcerer uses magic to stampede your horse over a cliff, or any other indirect method of accomplishing your death, the risk does not apply.”

  A panting soldier in a gray-and-gold tabard burst through the door. “Lord Arhys! There is a Jokonan herald at the gate, demanding parley.”

  Arhys drew in his breath between his teeth. “Warning indeed. Notice. Well, they have all my attention now. Illvin, Foix, Learned dy Cabon—Royina—will you attend upon me? I want your sight and your counsel. But stay back below the battlement, out of view, as much as you may.”

  “Yes.” Ista paused to release her ligature from Cattilara’s neck and be certain the demon would remain quiescent. Foix watched silently, taking up station at Ista’s shoulder as if to guard her. Liss had not been named in Arhys’s roll, but she rose anyway, arms crossed and shoulders tucked as if trying to make herself small and unnoticed.

  Illvin, striding for the door in Arhys’s wake, suddenly stopped and swore. “The cisterns!”

  Arhys’s head swiveled; the two looked at each other. Illvin clapped his brother on the shoulder.
“I’ll check, and meet you above the gate.”

  “Hurry, Illvin.” Arhys motioned all within to follow him out; Illvin turned aside on the gallery and ran.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THEY CROSSED THE COURT OF THE FLOWERS AND CLIMBED THE inner stairs after Arhys. Above the gate a projecting parapet thrust out. Arhys shouldered past his archers spread out along the sentry-walk, mounted to the top of the battlement, and stood spread-legged, staring down. Ista peeked out between the toothed stones.

  To the right, where the road turned away toward Oby, she could see the Jokonans settling into camp in a grove of walnut trees, just out of bowshot or catapult range. Tents were being set up, and horse lines arranged. On the far side of the grove, some especially large tents of green cloth were rising at the hands of servants, some wearing the uniforms of the palanquin bearers. To the left, down in the valley along the river, another column was pouring in, threatening the town walls. At its rear, some soldiers were already driving a few plundered sheep and cattle into the arms of their camp followers, dinner on the hoof.

  Beyond, the countryside looked deceptively peaceful—emptied out, Ista hoped; only one or two barns or distant outbuildings seemed to be on fire, presumably sites of some temporary, desperate resistance. The enemy had not—or not yet—fired the fields and crops. Did they anticipate being in secure possession of them by harvesttime? The third column presumably was taking up position behind the castle, along the ridge.

  The drawbridge was up, the castle gates closed. On the other side of the deep dry cleft that fronted the wall, the Jokonan parley officer stood, bareheaded. The blue pennant of his office hung limply from the javelin in his hand in the afternoon heat. He was flanked by two tense guards, sea-green tabards over their mail.