The Curse of Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He turned on his heel; dy Maroc’s face, drained white, wavered past his vision, hissing, “Cazaril, have you gone mad?”

  “Try me.” Cazaril grinned fiercely at him. Dy Maroc fell back. Cazaril strode down the corridor past a blur of men, blood drops still spattering off his fingers as he swung his arms, and out into the chill shock of the night. The closing door cut off a rising babble of voices.

  He almost ran across the icy cobbles of the courtyard toward the main block and refuge, both his steps and his breath growing faster and less even as something—sanity, delayed terror?—-seeped back into his mind. His belly cramped violently as he mounted the stone stairs. His fingers shook so badly as he fumbled out his key to let himself into his bedchamber that he dropped it twice and had to use both hands, braced against the door, to finally guide it into the lock. He locked the door again behind him, and fell, wheezing and groaning, across his bed. His attendant ghosts had fled into hiding during the confrontation, their desertion unnoticed by him at the time. He rolled onto his side, and curled around his aching stomach. Now, at last, his cut wrist began to throb. So did his head.

  He’d seen men go berserk a few times, in the madness of battle. He’d just never imagined what it must feel like from the inside, before. No one had mentioned the floating exhilaration, intoxicating as wine or sex. An unusual, but natural, result of nerves, mortality, and fright, jammed together in too small a space, too short a time. Not unnatural. Not…the thing in his belly reaching out to twist and taunt and trick him into death, and its own release….

  Oh.

  You know what you did to Dondo. Now you know what Dondo is doing to you.

  17

  It was by chance, late the following morning, that Cazaril spied Orico ambling out the Zangre gates toward the menagerie with only a page at his heels. Cazaril tucked the letters he’d been carrying to the Chancellery office into the inner pocket of his vest-cloak, turned from the door of Ias’s Tower, and followed. The roya’s master of the chamber had earlier refused to disturb his lord’s after-breakfast nap; clearly, Orico had finally roused himself and now sought comfort and solace among his animals. Cazaril wondered if the roya had awoken with as bad a headache as he had.

  As he strode across the cobbles, Cazaril marshaled his arguments. If the roya feared action, Cazaril would point out that inaction was equally likely to be bent to ill by the curse’s malign influence. If the roya insisted that the children were too young, he would note that they should not then have been ordered to Cardegoss in the first place. But now that they were here, if Orico could not protect them then he had an obligation to both Chalion and the children to tell them of their danger. Cazaril would call on Umegat to confirm that the roya could not, did not, in fact, hold the curse all to himself. Do not send them blindfolded into battle he would plead, and hope Palli’s cry would strike Orico as much to the heart as it had him. And if it didn’t…

  If he took this into his own hands, should he first tell Teidez, as Heir of Chalion, and appeal for his aid in protecting his sister? Or Iselle, and enlist her help in managing the more difficult Teidez? The second choice would better allow him to hide his complicity behind the royesse’s skirts, but only if the secret of his guilt survived her shrewd cross-examination.

  A scraping of hooves broke into his self-absorption. He looked up just in time to dodge from the path of the cavalcade starting out from the stables. Royse Teidez, mounted on his fine black horse, led a party of his Baocian guards, their captain and two men. The royse’s black-and-lavender mourning garb made his round face appear drawn and pale in the winter sunlight. Dondo’s green stone glinted on the guard captain’s hand, raised to return Cazaril’s polite salute.

  “Where away, Royse?” Cazaril called. “Do you hunt?” The party was armed for it, with spears and crossbows, swords and cudgels.

  Teidez drew up his fretting horse and stared briefly down at Cazaril. “No, just a gallop along the river. The Zangre is…stuffy, this morning.”

  Indeed. And if they just happened to flush a deer or two, well, they were prepared to accept the gods’ largesse. But not really hunting while in mourning, no. “I understand,” said Cazaril, and suppressed a smile. “It will be good for the horses.” Teidez lifted his reins again. Cazaril stepped back, but then added suddenly, “I would speak to you later, Royse, on the matter that concerned you yesterday.”

  Teidez gave him a vague wave, and a frown—not exactly assent, but it would do. Cazaril bowed farewell as they clattered out of the stable yard.

  And remained bent over, as the worst cramp yet kicked him in the belly with the power of a horse’s hind hooves. His breathing stopped. Waves of pain seemed to surge through his whole body from this central source, even to burning spasms in the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. A hideous vision shook him of Rojeras’s postulated demon-monster preparing to bloodily claw its way out of him into the light. One creature, or two? With no bodies to keep their spirits apart, bottled under the pressure of the Lady’s miracle, might Dondo and the demon have begun to blend together into one dreadful being? It was true that he’d distinguished only one voice, not a duet, baying at him from his belly in the night. His knees sank helplessly to the cold cobbles. He drew in a shuddering breath. The world seemed to churn around his head in short, dizzy jerks.

  After a few minutes, a shadow trailing a powerful aroma of horses loomed at his shoulder. A gruff voice muttered in his ear, “M’lord? You all right?”

  Cazaril blinked up to see one of the stable grooms, a middle-aged fellow with bad teeth, bending over him. “Not…really,” he managed to reply.

  “Ought you go indoors, sir?”

  “Yes…I suppose…”

  The groom helped him to his feet with a hand under his elbow, and steadied him back through the gates to the main block. At the bottom of the stairs Cazaril gasped, “Wait. Not yet,” and sat heavily upon the steps.

  After an awkward minute the groom asked, “Should I get someone for you, m’lord? I should return to my duties.”

  “It’s…just a spasm. It will pass off in a few minutes. I’m all right now. Go on.” The pain was dwindling, leaving him feeling flushed and strange.

  The groom frowned uncertainly, staring down at Cazaril, but then ducked his head and departed.

  Slowly, as he sat quietly on the stair, he began to regain his breath and balance, and was able to straighten his back again. The world stopped pulsing. Even the couple of ghost-blotches that had crept out of the walls to cluster at his feet grew quiescent. Cazaril eyed them in the shadows of the stairwell, considering what a cold and lonely damnation was their slow erosion, loss of all that had made them individual men and women. What must it be like, to feel one’s very spirit slowly rot away around one, as flesh rotted from dead limbs? Did the ghosts sense their own diminishment, or did that self-perception, too, mercifully, wear away in time? The Bastard’s legendary hell, with all its supposed torments, seemed a sort of heaven by comparison.

  “Ah! Cazaril!” A surprised voice made him look up. Palli stood with one booted foot on the first step, flanked by two young men also wearing the blue and white of the Daughter’s Order beneath gray wool riding cloaks. “I was just coming to find you.” Palli’s dark brows drew down. “What are you doing sitting on the stairs?”

  “Just resting a moment.” Cazaril produced a quick, concealing smile, and levered himself up, though he kept a hand on the wall, as if casually, for balance. “What’s afoot?”

  “I hoped you would have time to take a stroll down to the temple with me. And talk to some men about that”—Palli made a circling gesture with his finger—“little matter of Gotorget.”

  “Already?”

  “Dy Yarrin came in last night. We are now a sufficient assembly to make binding decisions. And with dy Jironal also arrived back in town, it’s as well we chart our course without further delay.”

  Indeed. Cazaril would search out Orico immediately upon his return, then. He glanced
at the two companions and back at Palli, as if seeking introduction, but with the hidden question in his glance, Are these safe ears?

  “Ah,” said Palli cheerfully. “Permit me to make known to you my cousins, Ferda and Foix dy Gura. They rode with me from Palliar. Ferda is lieutenant to my master of horse, and his younger brother Foix—well, we keep him for the heavy lifting. Make your bow to the castillar, boys.”

  The shorter, stouter of the two grinned sheepishly, and they both managed reasonably graceful courtesies. They bore a faint family resemblance to Palli in the strong lines of jaw and the bright brown eyes. Ferda was of middle height and wiry, an obvious rider, his legs already a little bowed, while his brother was broad and muscular. They seemed a pleasant enough pair of country lordlings, healthy, cheerful, and unscarred. And appallingly young. But Palli’s faint emphasis on the word cousins answered Cazaril’s silent question.

  The two brothers fell in behind as Cazaril and Palli walked out the gates and down into Cardegoss. Young they might be, but their eyes were alert, looking all around, and they casually kept their sword hilts free of entanglement with cloak and vest-cloak. Cazaril was glad to know Palli did not go about the streets of Cardegoss unattended even in this bright gray winter noon. Cazaril tensed as they passed under the dressed-stone walls of Jironal Palace, but no armed bravos issued from its ironbound doors to molest them. They arrived in the Temple Square having encountered no one more daunting than a trio of maidservants. They smiled at the men in the colors of the Daughter’s Order and giggled among themselves after passing, which slightly alarmed the dy Gura brothers, or at least made them stride out more stiffly.

  The great compound of the Daughter’s house made a wall along one whole side of the temple’s five-sided square. The main gate was devoted to the women and girls who were the house’s more usual dedicats, acolytes, and divines. The men of its holy military order had their own separate entrance, building, and stable for couriers’ horses. The hallways of the military headquarters were chilly despite a sufficiency of lit sconces and the abundance of beautiful tapestries and hangings, woven and embroidered by pious ladies all over Chalion, blanketing its walls. Cazaril started toward the main hall, but Palli drew him down another corridor and up a staircase.

  “You do not meet in the Hall of the Lord Dedicats?” Cazaril inquired, looking over his shoulder.

  Palli shook his head. “Too cold, too large, and too empty. We felt excessively exposed there. For these sealed debates and depositions, we’ve taken a chamber where we can feel a majority, and not freeze our feet.”

  Palli left the dy Gura brothers in the corridor to contemplate a brightly colored quilted rendering of the legend of the virgin and the water jar, featuring an especially voluptuous virgin and goddess. He ushered Cazaril past a pair of Daughter’s guardsmen, who looked closely at their faces and returned Palli’s salute, and through a set of double doors carved with interlaced vines. The chamber beyond held a long trestle table and two dozen men, crowded but warm—and above all, Cazaril noted, private. In addition to the good wax candles, a window of colored glass depicting the Lady’s favorite spring flowers fought the winter gloom.

  Palli’s fellow lord dedicats sat at attention, young men and graybeards, in blue-and-white garb bright and expensive or faded and shabby, but all alike in the grim seriousness of their faces. The provincar of Yarrin, ranking lord of Chalion present, held down the head of the table beneath the window. Cazaril wondered how many here were spies, or at least careless mouths. The group seemed already too large and diverse for successful conspiracy, despite their outward precautions to seal their conclave. Lady, guide them to wisdom.

  Palli bowed, and said, “My lords, here is the Castillar dy Cazaril, who was my commander at the siege of Gotorget, to testify before you.”

  Palli took an empty seat halfway around the table and left Cazaril standing at its foot. Another lord dedicat had him swear an oath of truth in the goddess’s name. Cazaril had no trouble repeating with sincerity and fervor the part about, May Her hands hold me, and not release me.

  Dy Yarrin led the questioning. He was shrewd and clearly well primed by Palli, for he had the whole tale of the aftermath of Gotorget out of Cazaril in a very few minutes. Cazaril added no coloring details. For some here, he didn’t need to; he could mark by the tightening of their lips how much of what was unspoken they understood. Inevitably, someone wanted to know how he had first come to such enmity with Lord Dondo, and he was reluctantly compelled to repeat the story of his near beheading in Prince Olus’s tent. It was normally considered bad manners to denigrate the dead, on the theory that they could not defend themselves. In Dondo’s case, Cazaril wasn’t so sure. But he kept that account, too, as brief and bald as possible. Despite his succinctness, by the time he was done he was leaning on his hands on the table, feeling dangerously light-headed.

  A brief debate followed on the problem of obtaining corroborating evidence, which Cazaril had thought insurmountable; dy Yarrin, it seemed, did not find it so. But then, Cazaril had never thought to try to obtain testimony from surviving Roknari, or via sister chapters of the Daughter’s Order across the borders in the princedoms.

  “But my lords,” Cazaril said diffidently into one of the few brief pauses in the flow of suggestion and objection, “even if my words were proved a dozen times over, mine is no great matter by which to bring down a great man. Not like the treason of Lord dy Lutez.”

  “That was never well proved, even at the time,” murmured dy Yarrin in a dry tone.

  Palli put in, “What is a great matter? I think the gods do not calculate greatness as men do. I for one find a casual destruction of a man’s life even more repugnant than a determined one.”

  Cazaril leaned more heavily on the table, in the interests of not collapsing in an illustrative way at this dramatic moment. Palli had insisted his voice would be listened to in council; very well, let it be a voice of caution. “Choosing your own holy general is surely within your mandate, lords. Orico may well even accede to your selection, if you make it easy for him. Challenging the chancellor of Chalion and holy general of your brother order is reaching beyond, and it is my considered opinion that Orico will never be persuaded to support it. I recommend against it.”

  “It is all or nothing,” broke in one man, and “Never again will we endure another Dondo,” began another.

  Dy Yarrin held up his hand, stemming the tide of hot comment. “I thank you, Lord Cazaril, for both your testimony and your opinion.” His choice of words invited his fellows to note which was which. “We must continue this debate in private conclave.”

  It was a dismissal. Palli pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. They collected the dy Guras from the corridor; Cazaril was a little surprised when Palli’s escort did not stop at the house’s gates. “Should you not return to your council?” he asked, as they turned into the street.

  “Dy Yarrin will tell me of it, when I get back. I mean to see you safe to the Zangre’s gates. I’ve not forgotten your tale of poor Ser dy Sanda.”

  Cazaril glanced over his shoulder at the two young officers pacing behind as they crossed over to the temple plaza. Oh. The armed escort was for him. He decided not to complain, asking Palli instead, “Who looks like your prime candidate for holy general, then, to present to Orico? Dy Yarrin?”

  “He would be my choice,” said Palli.

  “He does seem a force in your council. Has he a little self-interest, there?”

  “Perhaps. But he means to hand the provincarship of Yarrin down to his eldest son, and devote his whole attention to the order, if he is chosen.”

  “Ah. Would that Martou dy Jironal had done likewise for the Son’s Order.”

  “Aye. So many posts, how is he serving any of them rightly?”

  They climbed uphill, threading their way through the stone-paved town, stepping carefully across central gutters well rinsed by the recent cold rains. Narrow streets of shops gave way to wider squares of fine houses. Caza
ril considered dy Jironal, as his palace loomed once more on their route. If the curse worked by distorting and betraying virtues, what good thing had it corrupted in Martou dy Jironal? Love of family, perhaps, turning it into mistrust of all that was not family? His excessive reliance on his brother Dondo was surely turning to weakness and downfall. Maybe. “Well…I hope that level heads prevail.”

  Palli grimaced. “Court life is turning you into a diplomat, Caz.”

  Cazaril returned a bleak smile. “I can’t even begin to tell you what court life is turning me—ah!” He ducked as one of Fonsa’s crows popped over a nearby housetop and came hurtling down at his head, screaming hoarsely. The bird almost tumbled out of the air at his feet, and hopped across the pavement, cawing and flapping. It was followed by two more. One landed on Cazaril’s outflung arm and clung there, shrieking and whistling, its claws digging in. A few black feathers spiraled wildly in the air. “Blast these birds!” He’d thought they had lost interest in him, and here they were back, in all their embarrassing enthusiasm.

  Palli, who had jumped back laughing, glanced up over the roof tiles and said, “Five gods, something has stirred them up! The whole flock is in the air above the Zangre. Look at them circle about!”

  Ferda dy Gura shielded his eyes and stared where Palli pointed at the distant whirl of dark shapes, like black leaves in a cyclone, dipping and swooping. His brother Foix pressed his hands to his ears as the crows continued to shriek around their feet, and shouted over the din, “Noisy, too!”

  These birds were not entranced, Cazaril realized; they were hysterical. His heart turned cold in his chest. “There’s something very wrong. Come on!”

  He was not in the best shape for running uphill. He had his hand pressed hard to the violent stitch in his side as they approached the stable block at the Zangre’s outskirts. His courier birds flapped above his head in escort. By that time, men’s shouts could be heard beneath the crows’ continued screaming, and Palli and his cousins needed no urging to keep pace with him.