“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 yo
u 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.”
The Complete Chalion Page 49