The Complete Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  After a few more minutes of riding in silence, she added, “I want to know what else Wencel knows of Bloodfield—or Holytree, as he called it—if he’s such a scholar of the Old Weald as he claims. Tax him on it, if—when—you speak again. But do not tell him of my dream.”

  Ingrey nodded agreement. “Had you ever discussed your legacy with him?”

  “Never.”

  “With Princess Fara?”

  Ijada hesitated. “Only in terms of its value, or lack of it, as a bride-piece.”

  Ingrey drummed his fingers on the thigh of his riding leathers. “It must have been but a dream. Most souls would have been taken up by the gods at the hour of their deaths, whether your woods were Bloodfield or some lesser Wealding defeat. Any sundered who refused the gods would have blurred to oblivion centuries ago, or so the divines taught me. Four hundred years is far too long for ghosts to survive so entire.”

  “I saw what I saw.” Her tone neither offered nor requested rationalizations.

  “Maybe that’s what the addition of animal spirits does to men’s souls,” Ingrey continued in a spurt of inspiration. “Instead of dissolution, damnation becomes an eternal, cold, and silent torment. Trapped between matter and spirit. All the pain of death lingering, all the joy of life stripped away…” He swallowed in sudden fear.

  Ijada’s gaze grew distant, looking down the winding road. “I trust not. The warriors were worn and tormented, but not joyless, for they took joy in me, I thought.” Her eyes, turning toward him, crinkled a little at the edges. “A moment ago, you said it must be a dream, but now you take it for truth, and your doom foreshadowed. You can’t have it both ways, however delightfully glum piling up the prospects makes you.”

  Ingrey was surprised into a snort; his lips curled up at the sides, just a little bit. He yanked them back straight. “So which do you think it is?”

  “I think…” she said slowly, “that if I could go back now, I would know.” Her lids lowered briefly, and the next look she gave him seemed to weigh him. “I think you might, too.”

  They were interrupted then by a crowd on the road, some kinlord’s entourage from Easthome traveling to the funereal duty at Oxmeade. Ingrey motioned his men aside, scanning the mob of outriders for faces he recognized. He saw a few, and exchanged brief, sober salutes. Boarford’s men, and therefore the two brotherearls and their wives sheltered in the tapestry-covered wagon that jounced along the ruts. Almost immediately thereafter, Ingrey’s troop had to make way again for a procession of Temple-men, lord dedicats and high divines, richly dressed and well mounted.

  When they had all sorted themselves out once more, Ingrey found Gesca’s horse pressed up to his side, and the lieutenant favoring him with a mistrustful scowl. Ingrey spurred forward, and led on at a more rapid pace.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THEY CRESTED THE RANGE OF LOW HILLS NORTHEAST OF THE capital in the late afternoon. The town and the broad southern plains beyond spread out before their gaze. The river Stork curled away from the town’s foot in a bright silver line, growing more crooked until lost in the autumn haze. A few boats, merchant craft, sculled laboriously up or drifted down its length, making their way from or to the cold sea some eighty miles distant. As Ingrey reined back beside her, Ijada rose in her stirrups and stared.

  He studied her expression, which was part fascinated, part wary. Easthome might well be the largest city she’d seen in her life, for all that perhaps a dozen Darthacan provincial seats eclipsed it, and the Darthacan royal capital could have held it six times over.

  “The town is divided into two halves, Templetown and Kingstown,” Ingrey told her. “The upper town, on those high bluffs, holds the temple, the archdivine’s palace, and all the offices of the holy orders. The lower town has the warehouses and the merchants’ quarters. You can see the wharves beyond the wall, where the drainage runs out to join the Stork. The hallow king’s hall and most of the kin-lords’ houses are on the opposite end from the docks.” His hand swept out the sections. “Easthome used to be two villages, back in the old days, belonging to two different tribes. They feuded and fought across the creek that divided them till it ran with blood, they say, practically up to the time Audar’s grandson seized the place for his western capital, and stamped out all division with his new stonework. You can scarcely see the creek now, it is so built across. And no one now chooses to die for the sake of a sewer. Hetwar told me this tale; he takes it for a parable, but I’m not sure what he thinks the moral is.”

  The cavalcade descended the road to the easternmost gate on the Kingstown side. The stonework was good, it was true, the winding streets lined by high houses of tan blocks or whitewashed stucco, with glints of glass windows peering out from deep-browed embrasures. Red-tile roofs replaced wattle and flammable thatch; ordinary fires had probably destroyed more of the old twin towns than war. The defending walls were even more improved, although crowded with new building lapping too near and spilling beyond, compromising their purpose.

  They came at length to a narrow curving street in the merchants’ quarter, and dismounted before a slim stone house in a row of several such built abutting one another, though obviously at different times by different masons. Ingrey wondered if Horseriver owned not just this house but the row, and if such lucrative property had come to him with Princess Fara. The house was neither so rich nor so large as last night’s lodging, but it appeared decent enough, quiet and close.

  Ingrey dismounted and passed his and Ijada’s horses to Gesca’s care.

  “Tell my lord Hetwar I will report to him as soon as I see the prisoner secured. Send me my manservant Tesko, if you find him sober, with what things I am likely to need for the next few days. Clean clothes, for one.” Ingrey grimaced, stretching his aching back; his leathers reeked of horse and the grime of the road, and the stitches in his scalp were itching again, maddeningly. Ijada, stripping off her riding gloves and craning her neck, managed somehow to appear nearly as trim and cool as she had that morning.

  The house’s porter saw them inside; the woman warden-servant, guided by a housemaid, marshaled Ijada at once up the stairs, her leather-strapped case hoisted after by the porter’s boy. Ingrey set down his saddlebags and stared around the narrow hall.

  The porter ducked his head nervously. “The boy will be back in a moment to take you to your room, my lord.”

  Ingrey grunted, and said, “No hurry. If this place is to be my charge, I had best look it over.” He prowled off through the nearest doorway.

  The house seemed simple enough. The cellar and the ground floor were devoted to storage, a kitchen with antechamber and pallets for cook and scullion, an eating hall, a parlor, and a cubby under the stairs where the porter lurked. Ingrey poked his head out the only other outer door, which led to a back court with a covered well. The second floor included what might have been meant for a study, as well as two bedrooms. Passing the door of similar chambers on the next floor up, Ingrey heard the murmur of women’s voices, Ijada and her warden. The top floor was divided up into smaller rooms for the servants.

  He descended again to find the porter’s boy lugging his saddlebags into one of the bedrooms on the second floor. The furnishings were sparse—narrow bed, washstand, a single chair, a battered wardrobe—and Ingrey wondered if the place had been tenanted or not before Horseriver’s couriers had arrived last night demanding its possession. Light, distinctive footsteps and the creaking of, perhaps, a bed overhead marked Ijada’s location. The proximity was both reassuring and unsettling. When he heard her steps on the stairs, he turned for the hall.

  She had her hand raised to knock on his door as he opened it. In the other, she held Learned Hallana’s letter, a little crumpled now. Her warden—or was that, Wencel’s warden?—hovered behind her, peering suspiciously.

  “Lord Ingrey,” she said, reverting to formality. “Learned Hallana charged you to deliver this. Will you do so?” Her level eyes seemed to bore into his, silently reminding him of the rest of the sorceres
s’s words: to its destination, and no other.

  He took it, glancing at the scrawled direction. “Do you know who this”—he peered more closely—“Learned Lewko may be?”

  “No. But if Hallana trusts him, he must be worthy of it, and no fool.”

  What does that prove? Hallana trusted me. And a Temple-man neither foolish nor untrue might yet be no friend to the defiled.

  Still, Ingrey remained deathly curious as to what Hallana had reported of him, and of the strange events at Red Dike. The only way he might find out short of opening the letter himself was to be there when it was opened. And if he delivered it on his way to Hetwar’s palace, he would be relieved of any possible need to conceal it or lie about it to his master. Hetwar could not demand it of him then. If chided, Ingrey could feign its faithful delivery was just the sort of virtuous act Hetwar might properly expect of his henchman.

  “Yes. I will undertake the charge.”

  Ijada nodded intently, and he wondered if she read his corkscrew thoughts in his eyes, or not: or if she judged him as blithely as Hallana had.

  He added, “Stay in; stay safe. Lock your inner doors as well. I presume whatever comforts this house may offer are yours for the asking.” He let his eye fall on the servant-warden, and she made a circumspect curtsey of acknowledgment. “I don’t know what else Lord Hetwar may want of me tonight, so eat when you will. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He tucked the letter in his jerkin, bowed her a polite farewell, and made his way down the stairs. He wanted a bath, clean clothes, and a meal, in that order, but all such niceties would have to wait.

  Leaving instructions with the porter for his servant, should Tesko arrive before he returned, Ingrey walked out into the town.

  Familiar smells and sights subtly reassured him. He wound his way through the cobbled streets of Kingstown and across the half-buried creek, then climbed the steep steps up the near cliff of the temple side. Two switchbacks and a breathless ten minutes brought him to the stair-gate, winding crookedly under a tower and two houses, into the upper town. In the dark corner where the passage turned, a little shrine for the safety of the city stood, a few candles flickering in the dim drafts flanked by wilted garlands; reflexively, Ingrey made the fivefold sign in passing. He came out again into the early-evening light and turned right.

  A few more minutes’ walk brought him to the main square before the temple. He strode under the pillared front portico and into the sacred precincts.

  The central court was open to the air, and in its middle the holy fire burned quietly on its plinth. Through an archway into one of the five great stone domes surrounding it, Ingrey could see a ceremony beginning—a funeral, he realized, for he could glimpse a bier, surrounded by shuffling mourners, being set down before the Father’s altar. In a few days, Prince Boleso’s body, too, would pass through these rites here.

  On the other side of the court, the acolyte-grooms were marshaling their sacred animals for the little miracle of the choosing. Each creature, led by its handler dressed in the color of his or her order, would be presented before the bier, and the divine would interpret by its actions which god had taken up the soul of the recent dead. This not only guided the prayers of the mourners, but also their more material offerings, to the altar and the order of the proper god. Ingrey would be more cynical about this, but that he had more than once seen results clearly unexpected to all parties involved.

  A woman in Mother’s greens had a large green bird, which cawed nervously, perched upon her shoulder. A maiden in Daughter’s blue held a young hen with purple-blue feathers tightly under her arm. An immensely fluffy gray dog cowered close to the gray robes of an elderly groom of the Father’s Order. A young man in the reds and browns of the Son led a skittish chestnut colt, its coat brushed to a shimmering copper and its eyes rolling whitely. The animal snorted and sidled, yanking its groom almost off his feet, and in a moment, Ingrey saw why.

  Pacing slowly after the others loomed the most enormous white ice bear Ingrey had ever seen. The thing was as tall as a pony, and as wide as two. Its narrow eyes were the color of frozen urine, and about as expressive. At the far end of a long, thick silver chain, its handler followed, dressed in the white robes of the Bastard’s Order. The young man bore an expression of suppressed terror, and his head swiveled a little frantically between his charge and a towering man who followed after, murmuring encouragement.

  The man was nearly as arresting as the bear. He was broad-shouldered to match his height, with hair in a dense red horsetail down his back. Thick silver clamps held it in place, and thick silver bracelets clanked on his arms. Bright blue eyes held an expression of amiable bemusement which Ingrey was not sure whether to take as acuity or vacuity. His clothes—tunic, trousers, a swinging coat—were simple enough in cut, but colorfully dyed and decorated with elaborate embroidery. Big boots were stamped with silver designs, and the hilt of his long sword glittered with crudely cut gems. In the belt sheath at his back rested not a knife, but an ax, also elaborately inlaid, its blade gleaming razor-honed.

  A brown-haired man in similar but less gaudy dress, a good head shorter than his fellow yet still tall, leaned against a pillar with his arms folded, watching the proceedings with a most dubious expression. Some of the grooms shot him looks of supplication, which he steadfastly ignored.

  Ingrey tore his attention from this peculiar drama as he saw an older woman in the white-and-cream robes of the Bastard, the loops of a divine’s braid bouncing on her shoulder and her arms laden with folded cloth, scurry through the court, evidently intent upon some shortcut. Ingrey barely caught her sleeve as she sped past. She jerked to a halt and eyed him unfavorably.

  “Excuse me, Learned. I carry a letter for one Learned Lewko, which I am charged to deliver into his hand.”

  Her expression altered at once into something, if not more friendly, much more interested. She looked him up and down; indeed, he imagined he looked the part of a road-weary courier, just now.

  “Come with me, then,” she said, and abruptly reversed direction. Though Ingrey’s legs were longer than hers, he had to stretch his stride to keep up.

  She led him through a discreet side entry, down and up some steps, back outside behind the temple, and past the archdivine’s palace into the next street. Down one more narrow alley they came to a long stone building some two stories high, passed through a side door, and wended up more stairs. Ingrey began to be grateful he hadn’t just asked for directions. They passed a succession of well-lit rooms devoted to scriptoria, judging by the heads bent over tables and scratching of quills.

  Coming to a closed door in the same row, she knocked, and a man’s calm voice bade, “Enter.”

  The door swung open on a narrower room, or perhaps that was an illusion created by the contents. Crammed shelves lined the chamber, and a pair of tables overflowed with books, papers, scrolls, and a great deal of more miscellaneous litter. A saddle sat propped on its pommel in one corner.

  The man, sitting in a chair beyond one table near the window, looked up from the sheaf of papers he was reading and raised his brows. He, too, was dressed in Bastard’s whites, but the robes were slightly shabby and without any mark of rank upon them. He was middle-aged, spare, perhaps a little taller than Ingrey, clean-shaven, with sandy-gray hair trimmed short. Ingrey would have taken him for some important man’s clerk or secretary, except that the woman divine pressed her hand to her lips and bowed her head in a gesture of utmost respect before she spoke again.

  “Learned, here is a man with a letter for you.” She glanced up at Ingrey. “Your name, sir?”

  “Ingrey kin Wolfcliff.”

  No special reaction or recognition showed in her face, but the spare man’s brows notched a trifle higher. “Thank you, Marda,” he said, polite dismissal clear in his tone. She touched her lips again and withdrew, shutting the door behind Ingrey.

  “The Learned Hallana instructed me to deliver this letter to you,” said Ingrey, stepping to th
e table and handing it over.

  Learned Lewko set down his sheaf of papers rather abruptly and sat up to take it. “Hallana! Not ill news, I trust?”

  “Not…that is, she was well when I last saw her.”

  Lewko eyed the missive more warily. “Is it complicated?”

  Ingrey considered his answer. “She did not show me the contents. But I expect so.”

  Lewko sighed. “As long as it’s not another ice bear. I don’t think she would gift me with an ice bear. I hope.”

  Ingrey was briefly diverted. “I saw an ice bear in the temple court, as I came in. It was, um, most impressive.”

  “It is utterly horrifying, I think. The grooms were weeping. Bastard forfend, are they actually trying to use it in a funeral?”

  “So it appeared.”

  “We should have just told the prince thank you, and put it in a menagerie. Somewhere out in the country.”

  “How did it come here?”

  “By surprise. Also by boat.”

  “How big was the boat?”

  Lewko grinned at Ingrey’s tone, and looked suddenly younger thereby. “I saw it yesterday, tied up at the wharf below Kingstown. Not nearly as big as one would think.” He ran a hand through his hair. “The beast was a gift, or perhaps a bribe. Brought by this giant red hairy fellow from some island on the frozen side of the south sea, who is either a prince, or a pirate—it is hard to be sure. Prince Jokol, fondly nicknamed by his loyal crew Jokol Skullsplitter, I am informed. I didn’t think those white bears could be tamed, but he seems to have made a pet of this one since it was a cub, which makes the gift even more dear, I suppose. I cannot imagine what the voyage was like; they say they met storms. I suspect he is quite mad. In any case, he also brought several large ingots of high-grade silver for the bear’s upkeep, which apparently robbed the temple menagerie-master of the wits to refuse the gift. Or bribe.”

  “Bribe for what?”

  “The Skullsplitter wants a divine, to carry off to his glacier-ridden island in place of his bear. This is a fine work of missionary duty that any divine should be proud to undertake. Volunteers have been called for. Twice. If none steps forth by the time the prince is ready to cast off again, one will simply have to be found. Dragged from under a bed, perhaps.” His grin flickered again. “I can afford to laugh; they can’t send me. Ah, well.” He sighed once more and set the letter before him on the table, with the wax seal uppermost. He bent his head over it.