The Complete Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Cazaril,” said Iselle in urgent bewilderment as soon as the men had cleared the outer door—Nan hurried to shut it behind the invaders—“what has happened?”

  “Someone killed Dondo dy Jironal last night. By death magic.”

  Her lips parted, and her hands clasped together like a child just promised its heart’s desire. “Oh! Oh! Oh, this is welcome news! Oh, thank the Lady, oh, thank the Bastard—I will send such gifts to his altar—oh, Cazaril, who—?”

  At Betriz’s look of wild surmise in his direction, Cazaril grimaced. “Not me. Obviously.” Though not for want of trying.

  “Did you—” Betriz began, then pressed her lips closed. Cazaril’s grimace tilted in appreciation of her delicacy in not inquiring, out loud before two witnesses, if he’d plotted a capital crime. He hardly needed to speak; her eyes blazed with speculation.

  Iselle paced back and forth, almost bouncing with relief. “I think I felt it,” she said in a voice of great wonder. “In any case, I felt something…midnight, around midnight, you said?” No one had said so here. “An easing of my heart, as if something in me knew my prayers were heard. But I never expected this. I’d asked the Lady for my death…” She paused, and touched her hand to her broad white forehead. “Or what She willed.” Her voice slowed. “Cazaril…did I…could I have done this? Did the goddess answer me so?”

  “I…I don’t see how, Royesse. You prayed to the Lady of Spring, did you not?”

  “Yes, and to Her Mother of Summer, both. But mostly to Spring herself.”

  “The Great Ladies grant miracles of life, and healing. Not death.” Normally. And all miracles were rare and capricious. Gods. Who knew their limits, their purposes?

  “It didn’t feel like death,” Iselle confessed. “And yet I was eased. I took a little food and didn’t throw it up, and I slept for a time.”

  Nan dy Vrit nodded confirmation. “And glad I was of it, my lady.”

  Cazaril took a deep breath. “Well, dy Jironal will solve the mystery for us, I’m sure. He’ll hunt down every person to die last night in Cardegoss—in all of Chalion, I have no doubt—-until he finds out his brother’s murderer.”

  “Bless the poor soul who put his vile plans in such disarray.” Formally, Iselle touched forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, spreading her fingers wide. “And at such a cost. May the Bastard’s demons grant him what mercy ever they can.”

  “Amen,” said Cazaril. “Let’s just hope dy Jironal finds no close comrades or family to wreak his vengeance upon.” He wrapped his arms around his belly, which was cramping again.

  Betriz came near him and stared him in the face, her hand going out but then falling back hesitantly. “Lord Caz, you look dreadful. Your skin is the color of cold porridge.”

  “I’m…ill. Something I ate.” He took a breath. “So we prepare today not for grievous wedding but joyous funeral. I trust you ladies will contain your glee in public?”

  Nan dy Vrit snorted. Iselle motioned her to silence, and said firmly, “Solemn piety, I promise you. And if it is thanksgiving and not sorrow in my heart, only the gods shall know.”

  Cazaril nodded, and rubbed his aching neck. “Usually, a victim of death magic is burned before nightfall, to deny the body, the divines say, to uncanny things that might want to move in. Apparently, such a death invites them. It will be a terribly hurried funeral for such a high lord. They’ll have to assemble all before dark.” Iselle’s coruscating aura was making him almost nauseated. He swallowed, and looked away from her.

  “Then, Cazaril,” said Betriz, “for pity’s sake go lie down till then. We’re safe, all unexpectedly. You need do no more.” She took him by his cold hands, clasped them briefly, and smiled in wry concern. He managed a wan return smile, and retreated.

  HE CRAWLED BACK INTO HIS BED. HE HAD LAIN THERE perhaps an hour, bewildered and still shivering, when his door swung open and Betriz tiptoed in to stare down at him. She laid a hand across his clammy forehead.

  “I was afraid you’d taken a fever,” she said, “but you’re chilled.”

  “I was, um…chilled, yes. Must have thrown off my blankets in the night.”

  She touched his shoulder. “Your clothes are damp through.” Her eyes narrowed. “When was the last time you ate?”

  He could not remember. “Yesterday morning. I think.”

  “I see.” She frowned at him a moment longer, then whirled and went out.

  Ten minutes later, a maid arrived with a warming pan full of hot coals and a feather quilt; a few minutes after that, a manservant with a can of hot water and firm instructions to see him washed and put back to bed in dry nightclothes. This, in a castle gone mad with the disruption of every courtier and lady at once trying to prepare themselves for an unscheduled public appearance of utmost formality. Cazaril questioned nothing. The servant had just finished tucking him into the hot dry envelope of his sheets when Betriz reappeared with a crockery bowl on a tray. She propped his door open and seated herself on the edge of his bed.

  “Eat this.”

  It was bread soaked in steaming milk, laced with honey. He accepted the first spoonful in bemused surprise, then struggled up on his pillows. “I’m not that sick.” Attempting to regain his dignity, he took the bowl from her; she made no objection, as long as he continued to eat. He discovered he was ravenous. By the time he’d finished, he’d stopped shivering.

  She smiled in satisfaction. “Your color’s much less ghastly now. Good.”

  “How fares the royesse?”

  “Vastly better. She’s…I want to say, collapsed, but I don’t mean overcome. The blessed release that comes when an unbearable pressure is suddenly removed. It’s a joy to look upon her.”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  Betriz nodded. “She’s resting now, till time to dress.” She took the empty bowl from him, set it aside, and lowered her voice. “Cazaril, what did you do last night?”

  “Nothing. Evidently.”

  Her lips thinned in exasperation. But what use was it to lay the burden of his secret upon her now? Confession might relieve his soul, but it would put hers in danger in any subsequent investigation that demanded oath-sworn testimony from her.

  “Lord dy Rinal had it that you paid a page to catch you a rat last night. It was that news that sent Chancellor dy Jironal pelting up to your bedchamber, dy Rinal told me. The page said you’d claimed you wanted it to eat.”

  “Well, so. It’s no crime for a man to eat a rat. It was a little memorial feast, for the siege of Gotorget.”

  “Oh? You just said you’d eaten nothing since yesterday morning.” She hesitated, her eyes anxious. “The chambermaid also said there was blood in your pot that she emptied this morning.”

  “Bastard’s demons!” Cazaril, who had slid down into his covers, struggled up again. “Is nothing sacred to castle gossip? Can’t a man even call his chamber pot his own here?”

  She held out a hand. “Lord Caz, don’t joke. How sick are you?”

  “I had a bellyache. It’s eased off now. A passing thing. So to speak.” He grimaced, and decided not to mention the hallucinations. “Obviously, the blood in the pot was from butchering the rat. And the bellyache just what I deserved, for eating such a disgusting creature. Eh?”

  She said slowly, “It’s a good story. It all hangs together.”

  “So, there.”

  “But Caz—people will think you’re strange.”

  “I can add them to the collection along with the ones who think I rape girls. I suppose I need a third perversion, to balance me properly.” Well, there was being suspected of attempting death magic. That could balance him over a gallows.

  She sat back, frowning deeply. “All right. I won’t press you. But I was wondering…” She wrapped her arms around herself, and regarded him intently. “If two—theoretical—persons were to attempt death magic on the same victim at the same time, might they each end up…half-dead?”

  Cazaril stared back—no, she didn’t look sick�
�and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Given all the various vain attempts that people have made to compel the gods with death magic, if it could happen that way, it surely would have before now. The Bastard’s death demon is always portrayed in the Temple carvings with a yoke over his shoulders and two identical buckets, one for each soul. I don’t think the demon can choose differently.” Umegat’s words came back to him, I’m afraid that’s just the way it works. “I’m not even sure the god can choose differently.”

  Her eyes narrowed further. “You said, if you weren’t back this morning, not to worry for you, or look for you. You said you’d be all right. You also said, if the bodies are not burned properly, terrible uncanny things happen to them.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “I made provision.” Of sorts.

  “What provision? You sneaked away, leaving none who cared for you to know where to look or even whether to pray!”

  He cleared his throat. “Fonsa’s crows. I climbed over the roof to Fonsa’s Tower to, ah, say my prayers last night. If, if things had, ah, come out differently, I figured they’d clear up the mess, just as their brethren clean up a battlefield, or a stray sheep lost over a cliff.”

  “Cazaril!” she cried in indignation, then hastily lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Caz, that’s, that’s…you mean to tell me you crawled off all alone, to die in despair, expecting to leave your body to be eaten by…that’s horrid!”

  He was startled to see tears welling in her eyes. “Hey, now! It’s not so bad. Right soldierly, I thought.” His hand began to reach for the drops on her cheeks, then hesitated and fell back to his coverlet.

  Her fists clenched in her lap. “If you ever do anything like that again without telling me—telling anyone—I’ll, I’ll…slap you silly!” She knuckled her eyes, rubbed her face, and sat up, her spine stern. Her voice returned abruptly to a conversational tone. “The funeral has been set for an hour before sunset, at the temple. Do you mean to go, or will you stay in bed?”

  “If I can walk at all, I’m going. I mean to see it through. Every enemy of Dondo’s will be there, if only to prove they didn’t do it. It’s going to be a remarkable event to behold.”

  THE FUNERAL RITES AT THE TEMPLE OF CARDEGOSS were far more heavily attended for Dondo dy Jironal than they had been for poor lonely dy Sanda. Roya Orico himself, soberly garbed, led the mourners from the Zangre walking in loose procession down the hill. Royina Sara was carried in a sedan chair. Her face was as blank as though carved from an ice block, but her raiment was a shout of color, festival gear from three holidays jumbled together, draped and spangled with what looked like half the jewels from her jewel case. Everyone pretended not to notice.

  Cazaril eyed her covertly, but not for the sake of her bizarrely chosen clothing. It was the other garment, the shadow-cloak, visible-invisible twin to Orico’s, that tugged and twisted at his mind’s eye. Teidez wore another such dark aura, blurring along with his steps down the cobbled streets. Whatever the black mirage was, it seemed to run in the family. Cazaril wondered what he would see if he could look upon Dowager Royina Ista right now.

  The archdivine of Cardegoss himself, in his five-colored robes, conducted the ceremony, so crowded it was held in the temple’s main courtyard. The procession from the Jironals’ palace placed the bier with Dondo’s body down a few paces in front of the gods’ hearth, a round stone platform with a pierced copper tent raised over it on five slim pillars to protect the holy fire from the elements. A shadowless gray light filled the court as the cold wet day sank toward foggy evening. The air was hazy violet with a clashing mélange of the incenses burned in the prayers and rites of cleansing.

  Dondo’s stiff body, laid out on the bier and banked around with flowers and herbs of good fortune and symbolic protection—too late, Cazaril thought—had been dressed in the blue-and-white robes of his holy generalship of the Daughter’s military order. The sword of his rank lay unsheathed upon his chest, his hands clasped over the hilt. His body did not seem particularly swollen or misshapen—dy Rinal whispered the gruesome rumor that it had been tightly wrapped with linen bands before being dressed. The corpse’s face was hardly more puffy than from one of Dondo’s morning hangovers. But he would have to be burned with his rings still on. They’d never pry them from those sausage fingers without the aid of a butcher’s knife.

  Cazaril had managed the walk down from the Zangre without stumbling, but his stomach was cramping again now, unpleasantly distended against his belt. He took what he hoped was an unobtrusive place standing behind Betriz and Nan in the crowd from the castle. Iselle was pulled away to stand between the chancellor and Roya Orico in the position of a chief mourner that her brief betrothal bequeathed her. She was still shimmering like an aurora in Cazaril’s aching eyes. Her face was stern and pale. The sight of Dondo’s body had apparently drained her of any impulse to an unseemly display of joy.

  Two courtiers stepped forth to deliver seemingly heartfelt eulogies upon Dondo that Cazaril entirely failed to relate to the erratic real life of the man cut down here. Chancellor dy Jironal was too overcome to speak very long, though whether with grief or rage or both it was hard to tell beneath that steely surface. He did announce a purse of a thousand royals reward for information leading to the identification of his brother’s murderer, the only overt reference made this day to the abrupt manner of Dondo’s death.

  It was clear that a large purse had been laid down on the temple altar. What seemed all the dedicats, acolytes, and divines of Cardegoss were massed in robed blocks to chant the prayers and responses in both unison and harmony, as though extra holiness were to be obtained by volume. One of the singers, in the green-robed squad of altos, caught Cazaril’s inner eye. She was middle-aged and dumpy, and she glowed like a candle seen through green glass. She looked up once directly at Cazaril, then away, back to the harried divine who directed their orisons.

  Cazaril nudged Nan and whispered, “Who is that woman acolyte on the end of the second row of the Mother’s singers, do you know?”

  She glanced over. “One of the Mother’s midwives. I believe she’s said to be very good.”

  “Oh.”

  When the sacred animals were led forth, the crowd grew attentive. It was by no means clear which god would take up the soul of Dondo dy Jironal. His predecessor in the Daughter’s generalship, though a father and grandfather, had been claimed at once by the Lady of Spring in whose long service he had died. Dondo himself had served in the Son’s military order as an officer in his youth. And he was known to have sired a scattering of bastards, as well as two scorned daughters by his late first wife, left to be raised by country kin. And—unspoken thought—as his soul had been carried off by the Bastard’s death demon, it had surely passed through the Bastard’s hands. Might those hands have closed upon it?

  The acolyte-groom carrying the Daughter’s jay stepped forth at Archdivine Mendenal’s gesture, and raised her wrist. The bird bobbed, but clung stubbornly to her sleeve. She glanced up at the archdivine, who frowned and gave her a little nod toward the bier. Her nostrils flared in faint protest, but she obediently stepped forward, wrapped both hands around the jay, and set it firmly down upon the corpse’s chest.

  She lifted her hands. The jay lifted its tail, dropped a blob of guano, and shot skyward, trailing its embroidered silk jesses, screeching piercingly. At least three men in Cazaril’s hearing choked and hissed but, at the sight of the chancellor’s set teeth, did not laugh aloud. Iselle’s eyes blazed like cerulean fires, and she cast her glance demurely downward; her aura roiled. The acolyte stepped back, head tipped up, following the bird’s flight anxiously. The jay came to roost on the ornaments at the top of one of the ring of porphyry pillars circling the court, and screeched again. The acolyte glared at the archdivine; he waved her hastily away, and she bowed and retreated to go try to coax the bird back to her hand.

  The Mother’s green bird also refused to leave its handler’s arm. Archdivine Mendenal did not repeat the previous
disastrous experiment, but merely nodded her back to her place in the circle of creatures.

  The Son’s acolyte dragged the fox by its chain to the edge of the bier. The animal whined and snapped, its black claws scrabbling noisily on the tiles as it struggled to get away. The archdivine waved him back.

  The stout gray wolf, sitting on its haunches with its great red tongue lolling out of its unmuzzled jaws, growled deeply as its gray-robed handler suggestively lifted its silver chain. The vibrato resonated around the stone courtyard. The wolf lowered itself to its belly on the tiles, and stretched out its paws. Gingerly, the acolyte lowered his hands and stood down; his glance at the archdivine shouted silently, I’m not touching this. Mendenal didn’t argue.

  All eyes turned expectantly to the Bastard’s white-robed acolyte with her white rats. Chancellor dy Jironal’s lips were pressed flat and pale with his impotent fury, but there was nothing he could do or say. The white lady took a breath, stepped forward to the bier, and lowered her sacred creatures to Dondo’s chest to sign the god’s acceptance of the unacceptable, disdained, discarded soul.

  The moment her hands released the silky white bodies, both rats sprang away to either side of the bier as though shot from catapults. The acolyte dodged right and left as though unable to decide which sacred charge to chase after first, and flung up her hands. One rat scurried for the safety of the pillars. The other scampered into the crowd of mourners, which stirred around its track; a couple of ladies yipped nervously. A murmur of astonishment, disbelief, and dismay ran through the array of courtiers and ladies, and a stream of shocked whispers.

  Betriz’s was among them. “Cazaril,” she said anxiously, crowding back under his arm to hiss in his ear, “what does it mean? The Bastard always takes the leftovers. Always. It is His, His…it’s His job. He can’t not take a severed soul—I thought He already had.”