The Complete Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He looked back and smiled down at her in apology. “I am seized by a thought. I fear you will find me a rather distractible man.”

  It wasn’t how she would describe him, but she smiled briefly back in attempted reassurance.

  All too soon, footsteps sounded on the stairs. Arhys emerged into the luminous twilight, followed by Liss and Foix. Arhys looked scarcely more corpselike than anyone else in Porifors at present, but his face was spared the usual smears of sweat. Foix’s stolidity masked a deep depletion. He had spent the afternoon clumsily trying to undo sorceries all over the castle, to little effect. Dy Cabon had named the effort fundamentally futile, for various theological reasons that no one stayed to listen to, and yet had begged Foix’s aid himself when faced with the rising demands of the sick.

  “Arhys, come here,” said Illvin. “Look at this.” His brother joined him at the western parapet. “Five gods attest we know this ground. Royina Ista says there are but eighteen sorcerers in Joen’s pack altogether. A dozen lie in the front of the camp, along there…”—his hand swept in an arc—“six more in the command tents, a rather better guarded area, I suspect. One big circle could pass round them all, if it were rapid enough. How many sorcerers do you think you could excise with steel?”

  Arhys’s brows rose. “As many as I could close with, I suppose. But I doubt they would just stand there while we galloped up to them. As soon as they thought to drop our horses, we’d be afoot.”

  “What if we attacked in the dark? You said you see better in the dark these days than other men.”

  “Hm.” Arhys’s gaze upon the grove intensified.

  “Royina Ista.” Illvin turned urgently to her—and where was all that Sweet Ista now? “What happens when a leashed sorcerer is slain?”

  Ista frowned. Surely the question was rhetorical. “You’ve seen it yourself. The demon, together with whatever pieces of its mount’s soul it has digested, jumps to whatever new host it can reach. The body dies. What the fate of the remaining parts of the person’s soul may be, I do not know.”

  “And one other thing,” Illvin said, excitement leaking into his voice. “The leash is broken. Or at least—Cattilara’s demon broke from control at Umerue’s death. More: at that moment, the free demon became Joen’s rebellious enemy, dedicated to flight from her as fast as possible. How many demons could Joen suffer to have cut away from her array—jumping randomly into unprepared hosts, or even turning on her—before she was forced to retreat in disorder?”

  “If she doesn’t have others in reserve, ready to harness like a fresh team of horses,” said Arhys.

  “No,” said Ista slowly, “I don’t think she can. All must be there, tied in her net, or they will fly—away from each other if not from her. By Umerue’s testimony, it took Joen three years to develop this array, to bring each sorcerer-slave to some apex of carefully selected, stolen skills. Without another visit to whatever back door of hell her master demon can unlock, I doubt she can replace them. And all she’ll get at first is a spate of mindless, formless, ignorant elementals. We know she spills them, too; it cannot be a well-controlled process, not when dealing with the essence of disorder itself. Although…Cattilara’s demon fears recapture; if that is not just some filial obsession of Umerue’s, it implies recapture is possible. I don’t know how quickly Joen might effect it.”

  “With several freed demons flying in all directions, it would be more difficult, I should guess,” said Illvin.

  Arhys leaned his elbow on the stone wall and eyed his brother. “You are thinking of a sortie. A sorcerer-hunt.”

  “Aye.”

  “It cannot be done. I am certain to take wounds—which Catti would be forced to bear.”

  Illvin looked away. “I was thinking the royina could switch you back to me. For the occasion, as it were.”

  Ista gasped protest. “Do you realize what that would mean? Arhys’s injuries would be yours.”

  “Yes, well…” Illvin swallowed. “But then Arhys could go on for quite a bit more than his enemies would guess. Perhaps physicians or women could stay at my side, binding up the leaks as they spring. Buying extra minutes.”

  Arhys frowned. “And then…what? At your last gasp, break the link? Return all my wounds to me at once?”

  Ista tried not to let her voice emerge as a shriek. “Leaving you trapped in a hacked-apart body that can neither die nor heal?”

  Arhys said vaguely, “I really don’t have all that much feeling in my body anymore… Maybe I might not be trapped. Maybe”—his ravishing gray eyes rose to meet Ista’s, and the sudden light in them terrified her down to her bones—“I might be released.”

  “To the death of nothingness? No!” said Ista.

  “Indeed not!” said Illvin. “I mean the sortie to swing round and return to Porifors. The others would ride to guard you, and clear your way to the sorcerers. And make sure you got back.”

  “Mm.” Arhys stared down into the dusk. “How many men do you think it would take?”

  “A hundred would be best, but we do not have a hundred. Fifty might make it.”

  “We do not have fifty, either. Illvin, we do not have twenty, not mounted.”

  Illvin straightened up from the parapet. The excitement drained from his face. “Twenty is too few.”

  “Too few to ride out? Or to ride back?”

  “If too few to ride back, then too few to ride out. I could not ask it of any man if I were not riding myself, and I would perforce be detained in here.”

  “Only in a sense,” said Arhys. He was looking increasingly, disturbingly, intent. “We are dying here by the hour. Worse—Lord dy Oby will ride apace to our relief. He was never laggard, but for the sake of his daughter he will brook no delay. Without warning of Joen’s demonic deceits, he will race his troops into this trap.”

  “He cannot be here before day after tomorrow, at the soonest,” said Illvin.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. If today’s courier was taken by the Jokonan screen and failed to arrive at Oby, he’ll know at once, for I know the warnings about the ambush of Foix and the divine reached him. The fortress of Oby is already well aroused.” Arhys’s frown deepened. “Also, the longer we wait, the worse condition we will all be in.”

  “That would certainly appear to be true,” Illvin conceded.

  “And,” his voice lowered, “the worse condition I will be in. Our men are dying now without a blade being lifted or a quarrel being fired. By nightfall tomorrow, at this rate, Sordso’s forces will be able to walk unopposed into a castle manned only by corpses, unmoving save for one. And I will be left facing the same enemy—alone and unsupported.”

  “Ah,” said Illvin, sounding shaken.

  “Had you not thought it through? I’m surprised. Royina”—he turned to Ista—“I am sundered now. Freeing me from this body will not change that state. Let it be done while…while there is still some honor in it. Some use.”

  “Arhys, you cannot ask this of me.”

  “Yes. I can.” His voice fell further. “And you cannot refuse me.”

  Ista was trembling, both at what he proposed and at what he envisioned. That solitary fate was, she had to admit, the logical progression of events.

  “Arhys, no, this is too fey,” protested Illvin.

  “Fey is a man who looks forward to death. I look back upon mine. I am beyond fey, I think. If this hazard is to be cast at all, it must be soon. In the dark before dawn.”

  “This night?” said Illvin. Even he, who had advanced the plan, sounded appalled at its sudden acceleration.

  “This very night. We’ve been shoved most forcefully onto the defensive, and the Jokonans do not look to us, in our present shock, to turn it about. If ever the gods gave me the gift for finding the moment on the field, I swear to you, this is one.”

  Illvin’s lips parted, but no sound came out.

  Arhys smiled slightly and turned again to view the walnut grove in the fading light. Though perhaps not fading for him, Ista was remi
nded. “So, how would I find these sorcerers and not waste time butchering ordinary men?”

  Foix cleared his throat. “I can see them.”

  Behind them, sitting small and cross-legged by the wall again, Liss caught her breath.

  Arhys looked across at Foix. “Would you ride out with me, dy Gura? It’s a good pairing. I think you are less vulnerable to these sorcerous attacks than any other man here.”

  “I…let me look at the ground.” Foix, too, advanced to the battlement and leaned upon it, staring down at the camp. Ista saw by the way his eyes opened and closed that he marshaled his second sight to study this challenge.

  Arhys turned to Ista. “Royina, can you manage this thing? Neither Illvin nor I will be able to speak to you—we must rely on your judgment when to make or break our links.”

  I am every kind of afraid. Physically. Magically. Morally. But mostly the last. “I think I could cut Illvin free of you, yes. What about Cattilara?”

  “I would spare her,” said Arhys. “Let her sleep.”

  “To wake a widow? I am not sure that is a betrayal she could ever forgive. She may be young and foolish, but she is not a child now, and will never be a child again. In any case, she must be allowed to wake and eat, that she may lend you strength, and not fail through no fault of her own.”

  Illvin said, “I fear if she has any hint of this, she will grow quite frenzied. And I doubt her demon will be on our side either.”

  The stars were coming out, overhead. On the western horizon, glowing pink feathers of cloud were fading to gray. So much indifferent beauty, in the world of matter…

  “I must take thought for Cattilara,” said Ista. It seems no one else is willing to.

  From the deepening shadows, Foix spoke: “Lord Arhys, if you decide to ride out, I will go with you. If the royina will release me to your command.”

  Ista hesitated for three sick heartbeats. “I release you.”

  “Thank you, Royina, for this honor,” Foix said formally.

  “Come,” said Arhys to Illvin. “Let us go see if there is enough unbroken gear left in Castle Porifors to outfit this curious hunt. Foix, attend.” He turned for the stairs.

  Illvin strode back to grasp Ista’s hand and lift it to his lips. “I shall see you shortly.”

  “Yes,” whispered Ista. The grip tightened, and was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  IT WAS CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT BEFORE LORD ARHYS WENT TO REST in his chambers, so that Cattilara, on the other side of the door, might be roused to eat. His page removed his boots, but no more, and settled by the foot of the bed to guard his repose. Ista thought the exhausted boy would be asleep on the floor before five minutes had passed. Arhys lay back on his bed, eyes wide and dark in the light of the room’s sole candle.

  “Be tender with her,” he pleaded to Ista. “She has had to endure far too much.”

  “I will use my very best judgment,” Ista returned. Arhys accepted her words with a nod. It was Illvin, overseeing the dispositions before returning to the night’s too-eventful watch, who cocked a curious eyebrow at her as they turned away.

  “Be as careful of her as of her demon, and I don’t mean it the way Arhys does,” he muttered to Ista. “After that accursed escapade with the wagon, I believe there is no limit to what she would do in pursuit of her ends.”

  “I will use,” said Ista neutrally, “my very best judgment.” She let Foix and Liss pass before her into Lady Cattilara’s chamber and closed the door upon him, gently but firmly.

  The most levelheaded of Cattilara’s ladies was just arriving with the meal tray. The haggard look on her face, as well as the care she took setting the food down, told Ista she recognized the cost of it. Ista dismissed her only as far as a seat on a chest. Liss stayed by Ista’s elbow as she approached Cattilara’s bed.

  “Foix, stand by her feet. Keep an eye on her demon,” Ista directed. Foix nodded and did so. Ista was unhappy to be demanding yet one more duty of him, when he was so plainly drained to the point of swaying on his feet. He desperately needed to rest for a few hours before the sortie. But Joen had taught her greater caution of demons.

  Ista called up her inner sight and closed her hands around the flow of soul-fire from Catti’s heart, reducing it to the tiniest trickle of contact with Arhys. Ista imagined the look of life flowing from his face in the next room, and her chest tightened. The demon shadow squirmed in agitation, but did not challenge Ista’s control. Cattilara’s eyes flew open, and her breath drew in. She sat up abruptly, then swayed, dizzy. Liss pressed a tin cup of water into her hand. By the way she guzzled, pressing it to her dry lips, Ista thought they were none too soon with this sustenance. Liss transferred the tray to a small table by the bedside and drew off the linen cover. Plain fare, and stale, presented on a miscellany of battered old plates.

  Catti glared over the cup at Ista and glowered down at the tray. “What is this? Servants’ food? Or a prisoner’s? Is the mistress of Porifors so dethroned by her usurper, now?”

  “It is the last and best untainted food in the keep, reserved for you. We are now surrounded by a Jokonan army and besieged by a troop of sorcerers. Their demon magic is chewing everything within these walls to pieces and spitting it out upon us. All the water is gone. The meat seethes with maggots. Half the courts are burned, and a third of the horses lie dead. Men are dying tonight below us of disease and injury without ever having come within bowshot of Joen and Sordso’s troops. Joen’s new way of making war is ingenious, cruel, and effective. Extraordinarily effective. So eat, because it is the only meal Arhys will have tonight.”

  Cattilara gritted her teeth, but at least she gritted them on her first bite of dry bread. “We could have fled. We should have fled! I could have had Arhys forty miles from here by now, and out of this. Curse you for a lack-witted bitch!”

  Foix and Liss stirred at the insult, but Ista’s raised hand stayed them. “Arhys would not have thanked you. And who is we? Are you even certain whose voice speaks from inside your head right now? Eat.”

  Catti gnawed, gracelessly, but too driven by her ferocious waking hunger to spurn the proffered meal. Liss kept the water coming, for Cattilara’s sunken features betrayed how dangerously parched she had grown. Ista let her chew and swallow for several minutes, until she began visibly to slow.

  “Later tonight,” Ista began again, “Arhys rides out on a hazardous sortie, a gamble to save us all. Or die trying.”

  “You mean him to die,” Catti mumbled. “You hate him. You hate me.”

  “You are twice mistaken, though I admit to a strong desire to slap you at times. Now, for instance. Lady Cattilara, you are the wife of a soldier-commander and the daughter of a soldier-commander. You cannot possibly have been raised, here in this dire borderland, to such wild self-indulgence.”

  Cattilara looked away, perhaps to conceal a flash of shame in her face. “This stupid war has always dragged on. It will always drag on. But once Arhys is gone, he’s gone forever. And all the good in the world goes with him. The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!”

  “I have cursed them for years,” said Ista dryly. “Turnabout being fair.” Cattilara was furious, distraught, writhing in overwhelming pain. But was she divorced altogether from reason?

  So what is reality now, here in this waking nightmare? Where is reason? Absurd, that I of all women should insist on reason.

  “Keep chewing.” Ista straightened her weary back, crossed her arms. “I have a proposition for you.”

  Cattilara glowered in suspicion.

  “You may accept or refuse, but you may not have other choices. It quite resembles a miracle, in that regard. Arhys rides out tonight against Joen’s sorcerers. Illvin has volunteered to accept his wounds, to the point of death. It seems to me that two bodies, both nourishing Arhys’s sword arm and bearing his hurts, would carry him farther than one. Perhaps just the needed edge, that little difference between almost succeeding, and almost failing. You can be a par
t of his ride, or you can be shut out of it.”

  Foix, startled, said, “Royina, Lord Arhys would not desire this!”

  “Quite,” said Ista coolly. “No one else here will offer you this choice, Cattilara.”

  “You cannot do this behind his back!” said Foix.

  “I am the appointed executor of this rite. This is women’s business now, Foix. Be silent. Cattilara”—Ista drew breath—“widow you are and shall be, but the grief you will carry into the rest of your life will be different depending on the choices you make tonight.”

  “How better?” snarled Cattilara. Tears were leaking from her eyes now. “Without Arhys, all is ashes.”

  “I didn’t say better. I said, different. You may accept the part apportioned to you, or you may lie down and be passed over. If you do not take your part, and he fails, you will never, ever know whether you might have made the difference. If you accept the part, and he still falls—then you will know that, too.

  “Arhys would have protected you from this choice, as a father would a beloved child. Arhys is wrong in this. I give you a woman’s choice, here, at the last gasp. He looks to spare you pain this night. I look to your nights for the next twenty years. There is neither right nor wrong in this, precisely. But the time to amend all choices runs out like Porifors’s water.”

  “You think he will die in this fight,” grated Cattilara.

  “He’s been dead for three months. I did not war against his death, but against his damnation. I have lost. In my lifetime, I have looked two gods in the eye, and it has seared me, till I am afraid of almost nothing in the world of matter. But I am afraid of this, for him. He stands this night on the edge of the true death, the death that lasts forever, and there is none to pull him back from that precipice. Not even the gods can save him if he falls now.”

  “Your choice is no choice. It’s death all ways.”

  “No: death in different ways. You had more of him than any woman alive. Now the wheel turns. Be assured, someday it will turn for you. All are equal in this. He goes first, but not uniquely. Nor alone, for he will have a large Jokonan escort, I do think.”