The Complete Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “But I should ride with you, Royina!” cried the divine. “And Foix should not be left unguided!”

  “No. I need you here. And if Foix’s dancing bear requires a collar, I am better fitted to supply it.”

  “And you’re too fat and you ride too slow,” Liss’s unsympathetic voice floated through the window, accompanied by a thump of boots being lined up.

  Dy Cabon reddened.

  Ista rested her hand on his shoulder. “This is a dry country, and culverts are hard to come by. You will be one less terror for my heart to worry about, safe in here.”

  His color deepened, but he bowed in unhappy obedience nonetheless. Ista shut the door on him and hurried to don her riding clothes.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IN THE FORECOURT, ISTA WAS STARTLED BY THE HORSE LISS LED out for her. Tall, shimmering white with a soft gray nose, mane and tail like silk banners—Ferda would have waxed poetic. The stall stains were carefully washed off its coat, with only a few faint yellow traces that reminded her inescapably of the blotches on dy Cabon’s white robes. It snuffled and nudged at her, big dark eyes liquid and amiable.

  “What’s this?” Ista asked, as Liss led it to the mounting block.

  “They tell me his name is Feather. Short for Featherwits. I asked for the best-trained horse in the stable for you, and they begged me to take him out, because since Lord Illvin fell sick he’s done little but laze in his stall and eat and get fat.”

  “Is this Lord Illvin’s own mount, then?” asked Ista, throwing a leg over the broad back. The horse stood perfectly still for her as she disposed her padded knees gingerly against its sides and found her stirrups. “Surely it isn’t a warhorse.”

  “No, he has another stallion for that—evil-tempered scarred red brute that no one else will go near.” Liss threw herself up on her courier palomino, which sidled uncooperatively and seemed inclined to buck, but settled under her stern hand. “It’s savaged any number of grooms. They showed me their injuries. Very impressive.”

  Foix’s hand rose and fell, and he and Pejar on their mounts led the way out the gate, followed by Liss and Ista and then the half dozen remaining men of the Daughter’s company. They sorted themselves into single file to descend the narrow switchback road past the village. Beyond its walls, they turned onto the road from Tolnoxo that Ista had arrived down so many crowded days ago. Foix set a brisk but not killing pace, walking up slopes, trotting down, cantering on the flat. Featherwit seemed a slander, for the horse was so responsive to Ista’s lightest command of rein or heel that it seemed she had only to think her desire. Its trot was a long smooth ripple, its canter like being rocked along in a sedan chair. She was relieved by its gentleness, for it seemed a long way to the hard ground from her perch. Lord Illvin would need a tall horse, certainly.

  Riding through a moist wooded area by the river, they stirred up a plague of large buzzing horseflies. Ista grimaced and slapped at the ones she could reach as they settled hungrily on Feather’s silky sides. They crunched disgustingly, leaving blood streaks on her palm. Liss’s palomino bucked and squealed. Foix glanced back over his shoulder; only Ista saw the little violet flicker from his hand, but the ugly flies lifted from Liss’s mount. Since they then collected on Ista’s, this seemed little improvement, but the cavalcade broke into the sunlight and left the flies behind before she could complain.

  They made the long climb up the valley’s steeper side and stopped to water the horses at the village with the olive grove, some five miles out from Porifors. This shade was mercifully free of bloodsucking insects. Pejar went off to inquire of the villagers for word of the wagon they pursued. Ista found herself standing and stretching next to Foix in the shadow of a huge olive bole as the sweaty horses gulped from the stream.

  “Still playing with flies?” she inquired softly. “I saw that trick. No more, please, or I shall report you to the divine.”

  He blushed. “It was a good deed. Besides, I wanted to please Liss.”

  “Hm.” She hesitated. “Take my advice, and do not use magic to court her. Most especially, do not yield to the temptation to use it directly to induce her favor.”

  By his embarrassed grin, he knew precisely what she implied—and this wasn’t the first time the notion of some sort of aphrodisiac spell had crossed his mind. “Mm.”

  Ista’s voice dropped further. “For if you do, and she finds out, it will destroy her trust not only in you, but in her own mind. She would never again be sure if a thought or a feeling were truly her own. She would be constantly halting, second-guessing, turning about inside her head. Madness lies down that road. It would be less crippling and more loving if you should take a war hammer and break both her legs.”

  His smile had grown fixed. “As you command. Royina.”

  “I do not speak as your royina. I do not even speak as one god-touched. I speak as a woman, who has walked to the end of that road and returns to report the hazards. If you still possess half the wits you started with—and if it is indeed love you seek and not just your gratification—you will listen as a man.”

  His little bow, this time, was visibly more thoughtful, his smirk wiped clean.

  Pejar came back with the news that a wagon and team had indeed stopped at the grove earlier, lingering in the shade long enough to unhitch and water both pairs of horses; the wagon had left again not half an hour before. Foix grimaced satisfaction and cut their own rest short.

  Another four miles of trotting brought them to the top of a long rise. They at last saw their quarry rumbling down the road, small in the distance, the wagon’s canvas top, painted with the sigil of Porifors’s garrison, bright in the sunlight. Foix waved his troop onward. They had largely closed the gap before someone from the wagon spotted them. The invisible driver whipped up the team, but the lumbering dray horses, burdened by the load they towed, were no match for the pursuers’ faster mounts.

  Men of Foix’s company galloped up on either side of the noisily bouncing vehicle to lean over and seize the lead pair’s reins. As she in turn urged her horse up and around, Ista could hear Cattilara’s voice crying out in protest. The wagon slowed to a halt.

  Cattilara, dressed in an elegant traveling costume of gray and gold, was crouched on the driver’s box berating a terrified Goram, who hunched down with his eyes nearly shut, clutching his team’s reins in clenched and shaking hands. Ista narrowed her eyes against the light of the world and tried to extend her inner vision to its fullest sensitivity, to directly perceive not spirits hidden in matter, but spirits alone. Was this how the gods saw the world? Cattilara’s demon was not, to Ista’s relief, expanded and dominant, but curled in on itself within her again. Another male servant, one of Cattilara’s younger ladies, and Arhys’s page cowered together in the wagon’s back.

  Two nearly extinguished forms lay side by side within. With the blockage of Ista’s corporeal vision by the canvas and wood, it became almost easier to see what she was actually looking for. A wispy line of white fire, sluggishly drifting from one body to another; at a level of perception even below that, a net of violet light running three ways, the spell-channel.

  She tightened her fingers, and Feather stopped and stood in a placid obedience. She let the reins fall to his withers and stretched her hands, letting her spirit follow along with her body. And then, for the first time, flow beyond her body. Bastard, help me. Curse You. She did not, did not dare, try to break the underlying lines of the demon’s spell yet, but she set her ligatures and summoned soul-fire. The white line from Illvin to Arhys blazed up like a thatch catching alight in a distant dark.

  Arhys’s deep voice sounded from within, irritable as a man waking from sleep: “What is this? Illvin…?”

  Cattilara’s screaming abuse abruptly stopped. Her head drew in, and she shrank in her seat. Panting, she glowered at Ista.

  Movement sounded within the wagon: a creak, bootsteps on the floorboards. Arhys poked his head out and stared around. “Bastard’s hell! Where are we?” A gla
nce at the familiar landscape evidently answered the question to his satisfaction, for he turned his frown on his weeping wife. “Cattilara, what have you done?”

  On the wagon’s other side, the tensed Foix breathed relief and sent a small salute of thanks in Ista’s direction. The mauve flicker waiting in his palm died away.

  Cattilara turned in her seat and threw her arms around her husband’s thighs in wild supplication. Goram ducked out of her way. “My lord, my lord, no! Order these people away! Tell Goram to drive on! We must escape! She is evil, she wants to encompass your death!”

  Automatically, he patted her hair. His rolling eye fell on Ista, watching grimly. “Royina? What is this?”

  “What is the last thing you remember, Lord Arhys?”

  His brows drew in. “Cattilara sent me an urgent message to attend upon her at the garrison’s stable yard. I walked in and found this wagon standing at the ready there, then—nothing after that.” His frown deepened.

  “Your wife took it into her head to carry you off and seek healing for you elsewhere than Porifors. To what extent she was encouraged in this by her demon, I know not, but it certainly assisted her in it. Illvin was brought along principally, I suppose, as your commissary.”

  Arhys winced. “Desert my post? Desert Porifors? Now?”

  Cattilara flinched at the iron in his voice. Her collapse in tears before him failed, for once, to have any softening effect. When he turned her face up to his, Ista could see the tension in the tendons of his hands, standing out like cords beneath his pale skin.

  “Cattilara. Think. This desertion dishonors my trust and my sworn oaths. To the provincar of Caribastos, to the Royina Iselle and Royse-Consort Bergon—to my own men. It is impossible.”

  “It is not impossible. Suppose you were sick of, oh, any other illness. Someone else would have to take over then all the same. You are ill. Another officer must take your post for now.”

  “The only one I would trust to take over at a moment’s notice in this present uncertainty is Illvin.” He hesitated. “Would be Illvin,” he corrected himself.

  “No, no, no—!” She fairly beat on him with her fists in a paroxysm of frustration and rage.

  Ista studied the pulsating lines of light. Can I do this? She wasn’t sure. Well, I am sure that I can try. So. She folded her fleshly hands quietly in her lap and reached again with her spirit hands. Again leaving the demon’s underlying channels undisturbed, she tightened the ligature between Illvin and Arhys nearly to closure.

  Arhys fell to his knees; his lips parted in shock.

  “If you want him upright and moving,” said Ista to Cattilara, “you must keep him so yourself, now. No more stealing.”

  “No!” screamed Cattilara as Arhys half collapsed across her. Goram grabbed at him to keep his heavy body from toppling from the seat. Cattilara stared down at Arhys’s pale confused face in horrified denial. The fire of her soul roiled up from her body and collected at her heart.

  Yes! Ista thought. You can. Do it, girl!

  Then, with a wail and a white rush, Cattilara fainted away. The disorderly fire burst from her heart, splashing irregularly in the spell-banks. Ista extended a transparent hand again. The flow steadied, settled. Not too swift, lest it drain its reservoirs altogether, nor too slow, lest it fail its purpose. Just…there. Her inner eye rechecked the lines. A tiny trickle of life still flowed from Illvin, just enough to maintain contact. She dared not touch the demon’s subtle net, not that she was at all sure she could break it even if she tried. Arhys blinked, flexed his jaw, shakily stood up, one hand braced on Goram’s shoulder.

  “Oh, thank you,” muttered Foix into the blessed silence.

  “I used to carry on not unlike that, from time to time, in my first grief,” murmured Ista across to him, in uncomfortable reminiscence. “Why in five gods’ names did no one ever smother me and put themselves out of my misery? I may never know.”

  A rasping voice from within the wagon said, “Bastard’s demons, now what?”

  A flash of relief crossed Arhys’s features. “Illvin! Out here!”

  A padding of bare feet; Illvin, wearing only his linen robe and looking much like a man wakened too early after a night of too much revelry, stumbled out and stood blinking into the bright morning, one lean hand grasping the canvas frame for balance.

  His eye fell on Ista, and his face lit. “Witless!” he cried in delight. This odd greeting, Ista concluded belatedly, was actually addressed to his horse, who flicked its ears and snuffed, flaring its gray nostrils, and almost, but not quite, moved from the spot on which its rider had bade it stand. “Royina,” Illvin continued, giving her a nod. “I trust Feathers-for-Wits here has gone well for you? Five gods, did no one think to cut his feed?”

  “He is a most perfect gentleman,” Ista assured him. “I find him very shapely.”

  Illvin looked down at Catti, now slumped over against Goram’s shrinking shoulder. “What’s this? Is she all right?”

  “For the moment,” Ista assured both him and Arhys, who was eyeing his wife even more uncertainly. “I, ah…required that she change chairs with you for a little while.”

  “I did not know you could do that,” said Illvin cautiously.

  “Neither did I, till I tried it a moment ago. The demon’s spell is unbroken, just…reapportioned.”

  Arhys, his face rigid with his discomfiture, nevertheless knelt and gathered Cattilara up in his arms. Illvin felt his right shoulder and frowned; his frown deepened as his glance took in a slow red leak starting on Cattilara’s shoulder. He leaned aside for his burdened brother to duck back into the wagon. Ista handed her reins to Liss and scrambled from her saddle across to the wagon seat; Illvin extended a hand to swing her safely aboard.

  “We must talk,” she told him.

  He nodded in heartfelt agreement. “Goram,” he added. His groom looked up with open relief in his face. “Get this wagon turned around and headed back to Porifors.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said Goram happily.

  Ista ducked after Arhys and Illvin as Foix began calling instructions to his men to help back and turn the team. Arhys laid Cattilara, her head lolling, down on the pallet he had just vacated. It was dim and musty under the canvas after the bright light outside, but Ista’s eyes quickly adjusted. The other servant, Cattilara’s woman, and the page squatted fearfully at the back of the wagon among three or four small trunks. It seemed modest provision for the journey, though the marchess’s jewel case no doubt reposed somewhere within the baggage.

  Arhys sent the manservant and the woman forward to sit with Goram. His page, round-eyed with worry, settled near him; he gave the boy a reassuring ruffle of the hair. Arhys sat cross-legged by his wife’s head. Illvin handed Ista down onto the pallet opposite; she felt her scabs crack under their pads as she folded her knees. Illvin started to settle cross-legged next to her, realized the inadequacy of his narrow robe for that position, and sat instead on his knees.

  Arhys glowered down at his wife. “I can’t believe she’d think I would desert Porifors.”

  “I don’t imagine she did,” said Ista. “Hence this deceit.” She hesitated. “It’s a hard thing, when all your life rides on the decisions of others, and you can do nothing to affect the outcome.”

  The wagon finished its turn and started off at a walking pace. The team would be tired enough by the time they’d retraced the ten or so miles to the castle.

  Arhys touched Cattilara’s shoulder, now showing a dark red stain from the slow ooze beneath. “This won’t do.”

  “It must, till we get back to Porifors,” said Illvin uneasily. He stretched his arms and hands and hitched his shoulders, as if settling back into a body grown unused to him. He tested his own grip, and frowned.

  “I can only hope the garrison hasn’t fallen into an uproar over my disappearance,” said Arhys.

  “As soon as we arrive,” said Ista, “we must make another attempt to question Cattilara’s demon. It must know what is afoot in J
okona and, most of all, who dispatched it.” She repeated to Illvin the officer’s tale of the sudden reform of Sordso the Sot.

  “How very strange,” mused Illvin. “Sordso never showed any sign of such family feeling before.”

  “But—will we be able to question the creature, Royina?” asked Arhys, still staring down at Cattilara. “We had little enough luck the last time.”

  Ista shook her head in equal doubt. “I did not have Learned dy Cabon’s advice, before. Nor the assistance of Foix dy Gura. We may be able to set one demon upon the other, to some good effect. Or…to some effect. I shall take counsel of the divine when we return.”

  “I would take counsel of my brother, while I can,” said Arhys.

  “I would take counsel of some food,” said Illvin. “Is there any in this wagon?”

  Arhys bade his page search; the boy emerged from rooting among the supplies with a loaf of bread, a sack of leathery dried apricots, and a skin of water. Illvin settled and began conscientiously gnawing, while Arhys detailed the reports from Porifors’s scouts.

  “We are missing news from the north road altogether,” Illvin observed as Arhys wound up his rapid account. “I mislike this.”

  “Yes. I am most troubled for the two parties that have not yet returned or sent any courier. I was about to send another patrol after them, when my morning duties were so unexpectedly interrupted.” Arhys glanced in exasperation at his unconscious wife. “Or possibly go myself.”

  “I beg you will not,” said Illvin, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Well…no. Perhaps that would not be wise, under the circumstances.” His gaze upon Cattilara grew, if possible, more worried. She looked terribly defenseless, curled up on her side. Without the underlying strain of subterfuge in her face, her striking natural beauty reasserted itself.

  He glanced up and managed a brief smile for Ista’s sake. “Do not be alarmed, Royina. Even if some unseen force approaches from that direction, there is little they can do against Porifors. The walls are stout, the garrison loyal, the approaches for siege engines difficult in the extreme, and the fortress stands upon solid rock. It cannot be undermined. Support from Oby would arrive before our assailants had time to finish making camp.”