The Complete Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Catti was whispering. “Yes. That’s right. Come on.” The busy fingers worked. “It’s not fair. Not fair. Your seed is thick, and yet my lord’s has turned to water. What need have you for it? What need have you for anything?” The hands slowed again. Her eyes glittered, and her voice dropped still further. “We could ride him, you know. No one would ever know. Get a child all the same. It would be half Arhys’s at least. Do it now, while there’s still time.” Had that dark knot beneath her breastbone fluttered?

  A little silence, then her voice hissed. “I don’t want second-best. He never liked me anyway. All his stupid jokes I could never get. There is no man for me but Arhys. There will never be any man for me but Arhys. Always and forever.”

  The knot seemed to cringe inward again. Aye, Ista thought to it. You are not the pregnancy she seeks, I’ll warrant.

  Cattilara’s hands opened: framed taut, aching flesh spinning a thread of white fire from its tip. “There. That should hold for long enough.” She eased off the bed, which creaked, and flipped the robe almost closed again. Raised the sheet again, very gently, and lowered it to Illvin’s chest. Her hand coursed just above the white line, not touching it, as she slipped around the foot of the bed. Ista ducked down in a crouch, hiding her face and hair beneath her wide black sleeve. The creak of the door opening and closing again, the snick of a latch. Footsteps rising on tiptoe, hurrying away.

  Ista peeked over the balustrade. Catti rippled away over the pavement below, silks fluttering behind her as she ran, following the continuous line of light. Light that cast neither shadow nor reflection. She, and it, vanished under the arcade.

  What is this sorcery, Cattilara? Ista shook her head in bewilderment.

  I shall feed my starving eyes, then. Perhaps, when they are full enough, they will teach me…something.

  And if not, I shall still have snatched a crumb.

  The hinges on the door to Illvin’s chamber were very well oiled, Ista noticed. The heavy carved door moved easily. From here, she could hear faint snores from the next chamber, beyond an inner door. Goram, or some like attendant, sleeping within call, should a miracle occur and Illvin wake to call. Careful not to touch the floating line of light, she eased her way around a chest and padded across the rugs to Illvin’s bedside. The opposite side from the one Catti had taken. She delicately lifted his sheet down, opened his robe as Catti had, and studied him altogether.

  Ignoring the obvious for a moment, she tried to study the swirling light, to read some pattern or message in it. The brightest was collected at his groin, temporarily, but nodes glimmered over navel, lip, and forehead as well as heart. Lip and forehead were extremely faint. She was certain he was thinner than when she had seen him in her first dream, cheeks more hollowed, ribs…she had not seen his ribs before, but she could surely count them now. She could mark the line of his pelvic bone, beneath his skin. Her finger traced it, paused.

  He moved, barely: faint, highly recognizable twitches of lust…or, perhaps, the echoes of such movement, coursing back through the trembling line of light like a wave returning from some farther shore? Minutes slipped by; she could count her heartbeats. She could count his. They quickened. For the first time, his lips moved, but only to emit a low groan.

  A strain, a shudder, a brighter blaring of light, then it was over. The cold fire coursed chaotically over his body, then recentered its wellspring over the dressing below his heart and pulsed on. Pumping out…what?

  His flesh went back to looking disturbingly dead.

  “So,” Ista breathed. “Isn’t that…curious.”

  Wisdom, or even knowledge, eluded her still. Well, some aspects of what she had just witnessed were very clear. Some…weren’t.

  Softly, she closed his robe, tied its belt. Drew the sheet up as it had been. Studied the floating line of light. She remembered her dream of it.

  Dare I?

  She certainly wasn’t getting anywhere just staring at it. She reached forward, arched her hand around it. Paused.

  Goram, I salute you.

  She hitched her hip up on the bed and leaned forward. Touched her lips to Illvin’s, then took a deeper caress from them. Closed her hand.

  The light sputtered out.

  His eyes sprang open; he inhaled her breath. She propped herself on one hand, beside his head, and gazed down into those eyes, as dark as she remembered from her first visions. His hand moved, circled up behind her head, gripped her hair.

  “Oh. That’s a better dream.” Voice dusky as old honey, a soft northern Roknari-tinged accent: richer by far than she’d remembered from her own sleeping visions of him. He kissed her in return, cautiously at first, then more confidently—not so much in belief, as dizzily dispensing with belief.

  She opened her hand. The light renewed itself, spiraled up from him, sped away. With a sigh of anguish, he faded again, eyelids not quite meeting. The gleam between his lashes was the more disturbing for being so motionless. Gently, she closed them for him.

  She was by no means sure what she had just done, but the line of light had vanished along the whole of its length that she could see. On its terminating end, as well? And if that was the case…had it been another’s turn to swoon? Arhys’s? In Catti’s arms?

  Once, between ignorance, frenzied impatience, and terror, she had helped create a disaster. The night Arvol dy Lutez had died in the dungeons of the Zangre had been turbid with sorcery like this. Shot with searing visions, like this.

  But set in motion by an Ista—not like this…

  The terror that now throbbed dully in her head, she could do little about but endure. In endurance, if nothing else, I am by now an expert. Impatience she could swallow like a physician’s bitter draught. Ignorance…she might advance upon. Like an army with banners, or just a forlorn hope, she could not say. But Ista was not ready to face another night’s work like that one until she knew whether she was about to commit miracle or murder.

  Swiftly, regretfully, she rose from Lord Illvin’s bedside, patted the sheet out straight, drew her black robe about her, and slipped away through the door. She ran on tiptoe along the gallery, lifted up the grating of her window, and jerked herself back through. Slid the locking rod down. Closed and barred the inner shutters. Sat back in her bed and watched the crack.

  In another moment, the distant red glow from a candle wavered past, and slippered feet padded swiftly down the gallery. In a few minutes they returned the same way—slowly, pensively. In puzzlement? Whispered down the steps again.

  I am ill suited to this murky task. The Bastard wasn’t even her proper god. Ista had no doubt of her parentage, nor of the objects of her clumsy, stunted, hopeless desires. Though a disaster out of season, I surely am. But however many better godly couriers had been dispatched, she appeared to be the one who had actually arrived. So.

  One way or another, she was determined to meet Lord Illvin awake tomorrow. What was raving incoherence to others might prove plain as god light to a madwoman.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE SUN WAS BARELY OVER THE HORIZON WHEN LADY CATTILARA bustled in ready to escort Ista to the morning temple services, with a ladies’ archery contest and a luncheon to follow. This time, Ista had her excuses marshaled and ready.

  “I’m afraid I tried to do too much, yesterday. I was feverish and ill last night. I mean to keep quietly to my chambers today and rest. Please do not think that I must be entertained every minute, Marchess.”

  Lady Cattilara lowered her voice to a confidential tone. “In truth, the town of Porifors has little diversion to offer. We are the frontier, here, and as harsh and simple as the task we must perform. But I have written to my father—Oby is the second town of Caribastos after the provincar’s own seat. I am sure my father would be deeply honored to receive you there in a manner more befitting your rank.”

  “I am unfit to travel anywhere just yet, but when I am, Oby would be a most welcome halt on my return journey.” Marginally less exposed than Porifors to the dangers of th
e border, and rather more heavily manned, Ista could not help reflecting. “That is a decision for another day.”

  Lady Cattilara nodded sympathetic understanding, but looked pleased at the royina’s vaguely worded acceptance. Yes, I would imagine you would be relieved to see me shuffled off elsewhere. Or—something would. Ista studied her.

  Outwardly, she seemed the same as ever, all soft green silks and light linens over a body of yielding feminine promise. Inwardly…

  Ista glanced at Liss, hovering solicitously to finish dressing Ista’s hair and wrap her in her outer garments. A wholesome person had a soul congruent with the body, spirit occluded by the matter that generated and nourished it, and thus nearly as invisible to second sight as to the sight of the eyes. In the present god-touched magnification of her sensitivity, Ista fancied she could perceive, not intellect or emotion, but the state of the soul itself. Liss’s was bright, rippling, colorful with swirling energies, and entirely centered. The maid who waited to carry off the wash water had a quieter soul, darkened with a smear of resentment, but equally congruous with the rest of her.

  Cattilara’s spirit was the darkest and densest, roiling with strain and secret distress. Beneath its surface another boundary lurked, darker and tighter still, like a bead of red glass dropped in a glass of red wine. The demon seemed much more tightly closed this morning than it had last night. Hiding? From what?

  From me, Ista realized. The god scars upon her that were invisible to mortal eyes would surely shine like watch fires in the dusk to a demon’s peculiar perceptions. But did the demon share all its observations with the mount it rode? How long, indeed, had Lady Cattilara been infested by her passenger? The dying bear had felt ragged, as if its demon were some ravenous tumor spreading tendrils into every part of it, consuming and replacing the bear’s soul-stuff with itself. Whatever else Cattilara’s soul was, it seemed still mostly her own.

  “Did Lord Arhys return safely last night, to your heart’s ease?” Ista inquired.

  “Oh, yes.” Cattilara’s smile grew warm and secret.

  “Soon your prayers to the Mother will change from supplication to thanksgiving, I’ll warrant.”

  “Oh, I hope it may it be so!” Cattilara signed herself. “My lord has only a daughter—although Liviana is a pretty child, rising nine years old, lives with her maternal grandparents—but I know he longs for a son. If I might bear him one, he would honor me above all women!”

  Above, perhaps, the memory of his first wife? Do you compete with a dead woman, girl? The blurred light of retrospective could lend a perfection hard for breathing flesh to match. Despite herself, Ista was moved to pity. “I remember this awkward period of waiting—the monthly disappointments—my mother used to write me severe letters, full of advice on my diet, as if it were my fault that my womb did not fill.”

  Cattilara’s face livened with eager interest. “How unjust! Roya Ias was quite an old man—much older than Arhys.” She hesitated curiously, then asked in a shyer voice, “Did you…do anything special? To get Iselle?”

  Ista grimaced in remembered aggravation. “Every lady-in-waiting in the Zangre, whether they’d ever borne a child or not, had a dozen country remedies to press upon me.”

  Cattilara inquired, with unexpected wryness, “Did they offer any to Ias?”

  “A fresh young bride seemed tonic enough for him.” At first. Ias’s oddly diffident early lustfulness had faded over time and with his otherwise well-concealed disappointment at a girl child’s birth. Age and the curse more than accounted for the rest of his problems. Ista suspected that rather than swallowing noxious potions, he had taken to adding a private detour for stimulation by his lover before he visited her chamber. If she had continued infertile, might Lord dy Lutez have persuaded Ias to cut out the middle step and admit him directly to her bed? How long before the relentless expectation would have pressured Ista to compliance? Righteous indignation at such blandishment burned all the hotter when it concealed real temptation, for Arvol dy Lutez had been a striking man. That part, at least, of Cattilara’s strange rage at her brother-in-law Illvin presented no block to Ista’s understanding whatsoever.

  Ista blinked, as a solution to the knotty problem of having Cattilara—and her demon—underfoot at Illvin’s noontime awakening occurred to her. An ugly ploy, but effective. She added smoothly, “For myself, the last thing I tried before I became pregnant with Teidez was the poultice of finger-lily flowers. That remedy was the contribution of Lady dy Vara’s old nurse, as I recall. Lady dy Vara swore by it. She’d had six children by then.”

  Cattilara’s gaze grew suddenly intent. “Finger-lilies? I don’t believe I know that flower. Does it grow here in the north?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I saw some growing near the meadow where Lord Arhys had his camp, the other day. Liss would recognize the plant, I’m sure.” Behind Cattilara’s shoulder, Liss’s brows flew up in protest; Ista raised two fingers to command her silence. Ista went on, “The old nurse had it that they must be gathered by the supplicant herself, barefoot, at high noon when the sun is most fecund. Cut with a silver knife while praying to the Mother, the petals wrapped in a band of cheesecloth—or silk, for a lady—and worn about the waist until she next lies with her husband.”

  “What was the wording of the prayer?” asked Lady Cattilara.

  “Nothing special, so long as it was sincere.”

  “This worked for you?”

  “How can one be sure?” In fact, she’d never quacked herself with any of the suggestions she’d been pelted with by her well-wishers. Except for prayer. And we all know how well that worked, in the end. Ista mentally composed her next lure, but was cut short by her fish leaping into her net.

  “Royina…since there is to be no ladies’ fête this noon…might I borrow your handmaiden Liss to assist me in locating some of these wonderful blooms?”

  “Certainly, Marchess.” Ista smiled. “I shall rest and write letters.”

  “I will see you are brought luncheon,” Cattilara promised, and curtseyed herself out. To go look for a silver knife and a silk scarf, Ista guessed.

  “Royina,” Liss hissed, when the marchess’s steps had receded down the outside stairs. “I don’t know anything about this flower you’re talking about.”

  “Actually, it’s a short green shoot that has little flowers dangling in a row, called Mother’s bells, but it hardly matters. What I wish of you is that you get the marchess as far away from Porifors as you can persuade her to ride by noon. Let her pick any flower that isn’t poisonous.” Now, there was another temptation… Ista recalled childhood encounters with blister-ivy and stinging nettle, and smiled grimly. But whatever was going on with Cattilara was deathly serious, and no pretext for japery, no matter how the girl set Ista’s teeth on edge. “Mark if she becomes suddenly anxious to return, or otherwise behaves or speaks oddly. Delay her as long as you reasonably may, however you can.”

  Liss frowned, her brow wrinkling. “Why?”

  Ista hesitated. “When the stationmaster hands you a sealed pouch, do you peek inside?”

  “No, Royina!” said Liss indignantly.

  “I need you to be my courier in this.”

  Liss blinked. “Oh.” She executed her bow-curtsey.

  “The exercise will do the marchess no harm. Though…it would be well, also, if you are subtle in your misdirection, and take care not to offend her.” That the demon dared not show itself before Ista did not guarantee that it dared not show itself at all. Ista had no idea of its powers and limits, yet.

  Baffled but obliging, Liss undertook the charge. Ista ate a light breakfast in her room, opened the shutters to the morning light, and settled down with borrowed pens and paper.

  First was a short, sharp note to the provincar of Tolnoxo, none too delicately conveying Ista’s displeasure with his casual treatment of her courier and his failure more speedily to produce the lost Foix and Learned dy Cabon, and a demand of better assistance to Ferda. A more candid letter
to the archdivine of Maradi, pleading for the Temple’s aid in searching for the afflicted Foix and his companion. Liss had found her way to Porifors speedily enough; what dire delay could be keeping the pair of them…?

  Ista subdued her pent-up anxiety by penning a letter to Chancellor dy Cazaril in Cardegoss, commending Liss and Ferda and Foix and their company for their recent courage and loyalty. Then a bland missive to Valenda, assuring all of her safety, neglecting to mention any of the unpleasant details of her recent adventures. A somewhat less bland but equally reassuring note to Iselle and Bergon, asserting that she was safe but desiring conveyance… She glanced through the iron grille toward the opposite gallery, and set the last one aside unfinished, not so sure she desired conveyance just yet.

  After a time spent thoughtfully tapping her cheek with the feather of her quill, she reopened and added a postscript to the letter to Lord dy Cazaril.

  My other sight has returned. There is a difficult situation here.

  AT LENGTH, A PAGE APPEARED TO COLLECT LISS FOR HER NOON EXPEDITION with the marchess. Sometime after that, a maid arrived with a luncheon for Ista on a tray, accompanied by a gentlewoman of the marchess’s retinue evidently detailed to keep Ista company. Ista bade the maid set the tray on the table and leave her, and ruthlessly dismissed the disappointed lady-in-waiting as well. As soon as their footsteps had faded outside, Ista slipped through the outer chamber and out the door. The sun, she noted grimly, shone down high and hot into the stone court, making black accent marks of the shadows. At the opposite end of the gallery, she knocked on Lord Illvin’s carved door.

  It swung open. Goram’s rusty voice began, “Now, did you have that fool of a cook stew the meat softer today—” then died away. “Royina.” He gulped and ducked his head, but did not invite her inside.

  “Good afternoon, Goram.” Ista lifted her hand and pressed the door wide. He gave way helplessly, looking frightened.