The Curse of Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  CAZARIL FOUND THE THIRD-FLOOR CORRIDOR OF THE main block promisingly crowded upon his return. Green-robed physicians and their acolyte assistants scurried in and out. Servants hurried with water, linens, blankets, strange drinks in silver ewers. As Cazaril lingered, wondering what assistance he might offer, the archdivine emerged from the antechamber and started down the corridor, his face set and introspective.

  “Your Reverence?” Cazaril touched his five-colored sleeve in passing. “How goes the boy?”

  “Ah, Lord Cazaril.” Mendenal turned aside briefly. “The chancellor and the royesse have given me purses for prayers on his behalf. I go to set them in motion.”

  “Do you think…prayers will do any good?” Do you think any prayers will do good?

  “Prayer is always good.”

  No, it’s not, Cazaril wanted to reply, but held his tongue.

  Mendenal added suggestively, lowering his voice, “Yours might be especially efficacious. At this time.”

  Not so far as Cazaril had noticed. “Your Reverence, I do not hate any man in this world enough to inflict the results of my prayers upon him.”

  “Ah,” said Mendenal uneasily. He managed a smile, and took polite leave.

  Royesse Iselle stepped into the corridor and glanced up and down it. She spied Cazaril and motioned him to her.

  He bowed. “Royesse?”

  She, too, lowered her voice; everyone here seemed to speak in hushed tones. “There is talk of an amputation. Can you—would you be willing—to help hold him down, if it chances so? I think you are familiar with the procedure?”

  “Indeed, Royesse.” Cazaril swallowed. Nightmare memories of bad moments in field hospitals flitted through his mind. He had never been able to decide if the men who tried to take it bravely or the men whose minds broke in terror were the hardest for their helpers to endure. Better by far the men who were unconscious to start with. “Tell the physicians I am at their service, and Lord Teidez’s.”

  Cazaril could hear from the antechamber where he leaned against the wall to wait just when the proposal was floated to Teidez. The boy was going to be of the second category, it seemed. He cried, and bellowed that he would not be made a cripple by traitors and idiots, and threw things. His rising hysteria was only calmed when a second physician opined that the infection was not gangrene after all—Cazaril’s nose agreed—but rather, blood poisoning, and that amputation would do more harm than good now. Treatment was reduced to a mere lancing, although from Teidez’s yells and struggles it might as well have been an amputation. Despite the draining of the wound, Teidez’s fever soared; servants brought buckets of cold water to make him a bath in a copper tub in the sitting room, then the physicians had to wrestle him into it.

  Between physicians, acolytes, and servants, they seemed to have enough hands for these practical tasks, and Cazaril withdrew for a time to his own office on the floor above. There he diverted his mind by writing tart letters to those town councils late with their royally mandated payments to the royesse’s household, which was all of them. They had sent letters of excuse claiming poor crops, banditry, plague, evil weather, and cheating tax gatherers. Six towns’ worth of troubles; Cazaril wondered if Orico had pulled a fast one with his betrothal gift and dumped the six worst towns on his rent rolls onto his sister and Dondo, or whether all of Chalion was in such disarray.

  Iselle and Betriz came in, looking weary and strained.

  “My brother is more ill than I have ever seen him,” Iselle confided to Cazaril. “We are going to set up my private altar and pray before dinner. I’m wondering if we should perhaps fast as well.”

  “I think what may be needed here are not others’ prayers, but Teidez’s himself; and not for health, but for forgiveness.”

  Iselle shook her head. “He refuses to pray at all. He says it’s not his fault, but Dondo’s, which is certainly true up to a point…. He cries he never intended to hurt Orico, and they are slanderers who say so.”

  “Is anyone saying so?”

  Betriz put in, “No one says it to the royesse’s face. But there are strange rumors among the servants, Nan says.”

  Iselle’s frown deepened. “Cazaril…could it be?”

  Cazaril leaned his elbows on his table and rubbed the ache between his brows. “I think…not on Teidez’s part. I believe him when he says it was Dondo’s idea. Dondo, now, of him I would believe anything. Think it through from his point of view. He marries Teidez’s sister, then arranges for Teidez to ascend the throne while still a minor. He knew from watching his brother Martou just how much power a man may wield sitting in a roya’s pocket. Grant you, I don’t know how he intended to rid himself of Martou, but I am certain Dondo meant to be the next chancellor, perhaps regent, of Chalion. Maybe even roya of Chalion, depending on what evil chances he could arrange for Teidez.”

  Iselle caught her lower lip in her teeth. “And here I thought you had only saved me.” She touched Cazaril briefly on the shoulder and passed on into her chambers.

  Cazaril accompanied Iselle and Betriz on their predinner visit to Orico. Orico, though no better, was no worse. They found him arrayed in fresh linens, sitting up in bed, and being read to by Sara. The roya spoke hopefully of an improvement in his right eye, for he thought he could now see shapes moving. Cazaril thought the physician’s diagnosis of dropsy all too likely, for Orico’s gross flesh was swollen even more grossly; the roya’s thumbprint, placed upon the tight fat of his face, stayed pale and visible for a long time. Iselle downplayed the alarming reports of Teidez’s infection to Orico, but in the antechamber on the way out spoke frankly to Sara. Sara’s lips tightened; she made little comment to Teidez’s sister, but Cazaril thought that here at least was one who did not pray for the bewildered brutal boy.

  After supper, Teidez’s fever rose even higher. He stopped fighting and complaining, and fell into lassitude. A couple of hours before midnight, he seemed to fall to sleep. Iselle and Betriz at last left the royse’s antechamber and climbed to their own rooms for some rest.

  Close to midnight, unable to sleep for sake of his usual anticipations, Cazaril again went down the corridor to Teidez’s chambers. The chief physician, going to wake the boy to administer some fever-reducing syrup, fresh-concocted and delivered by a panting acolyte, found that Teidez could not be roused.

  Cazaril trudged up the stairs to report this to a sleepy Nan dy Vrit.

  “Well, there’s naught Iselle can do about it,” opined Nan. “She’s just dropped off, poor girl. Can we not let her sleep?”

  Cazaril hesitated, then said, “No.”

  So the two tired, worried young women dressed themselves again and trooped back down to Teidez’s crowded sitting room. Chancellor dy Jironal arrived, fetched from Jironal Palace.

  Dy Jironal frowned at Cazaril, and bowed to Iselle. “Royesse. This sickroom is no place for you.” His sour glance back to Cazaril silently added, Or you.

  Iselle’s eyes narrowed, but she replied in a quiet, dignified voice, “None here has a better right. Or a greater duty.” After a brief pause, she added, “And I must bear witness on my mother’s behalf.”

  Dy Jironal inhaled, then apparently thought better of whatever he’d been about to say. He might profitably save the clash of wills for some other time and place, Cazaril thought. There would be opportunities enough.

  Cold compresses failed to lower Teidez’s fever, and needle pricks failed to rouse him. His anxious attendants were thrown into a flurry when he had a brief seizure. His breathing became even more rasping and labored than the unconscious Umegat’s had been. Out in the corridor, a quintet of cantors, one voice from each of the five orders, sang prayers; their voices blended and echoed, a heartbreakingly beautiful background of sound to these dreadful doings.

  The harmonies paused. In that moment, Cazaril realized the labored breathing from the bedchamber beyond had stopped. Everyone fell silent in the face of that silence. One of the several attendant physicians, his face drained and wet with tea
rs, came to the antechamber and called in dy Jironal and Iselle for witnesses. Voices rose and fell, very soft and low, from Teidez’s bedchamber for a moment or two.

  Both were pale when they came out again. Dy Jironal was pale and shocked; even to the last, Cazaril realized, the man had been expecting Teidez to pull through and recover. Iselle was pale and nearly expressionless. The black shadow boiled thickly about her.

  Every face in the antechamber turned toward her, like compass needles swinging. The royacy of Chalion had a new Heiress.

  20

  Iselle’s eyes, though reddened with fatigue and grief, were dry. Betriz, going to support her, dashed tears from the corners of hers. It was a little hard to tell which young woman leaned upon the other.

  Chancellor dy Jironal cleared his throat. “I will take word of this bereavement to Orico.” Belatedly, he added, “Allow me to serve you in this, Royesse.”

  “Yes…” Iselle looked around the chamber a little blindly. “Let all these good people go about their tasks.”

  Dy Jironal’s brows drew down, as though a hundred thoughts flitted behind his eyes, and he scarcely knew which to grasp first. He glanced at Betriz, and at Cazaril. “Your household…your household must be increased to match your new dignity. I shall see to it.”

  “I cannot think about all these things now. Tomorrow will be soon enough. For tonight, my lord Chancellor, please leave me to my sorrow.”

  “Of course, Royesse.” Dy Jironal bowed, and made to depart.

  “Oh,” Iselle added, “pray do not dispatch any courier to my mother until I can write a letter to include.”

  In the doorway, dy Jironal paused and gave another half bow in acknowledgment. “Certainly.”

  As Betriz escorted Iselle out, the royesse murmured to Cazaril in passing, “Cazaril, ‘tend on me in half an hour. I must think.”

  Cazaril bent his head.

  The crowd of courtiers in the antechamber and sitting room dispersed, but for Teidez’s secretary, who stood looking bereft and useless. Only the acolytes and servants whose task it now was to wash and prepare the royse’s body remained. The stunned and distraught chorus of cantors sang one last prayer, this time a threnody for the passage of the dead, their voices choked and wavering, and then they, too, turned to make their way out.

  Cazaril was not sure if his head or his belly ached more. He fled into his own chamber at the end of the hallway, shut the door behind him, and braced himself for Dondo’s nightly onslaught, not, his knotting stomach told him, to be any further delayed.

  His familiar cramps doubled him over as usual, but to his surprise, Dondo was silent tonight. Was he, too, daunted by Teidez’s death? If Dondo had intended the boy’s destruction to follow from Orico’s, he had it now—too late to serve any purpose he’d pursued in life.

  Cazaril did not find the silence a respite. His heightened sensitivity to that malevolent presence assured him Dondo was still trapped within him. Hungry. Angry. Thinking? Intelligence had not been a notable characteristic of Dondo’s spewing before now. Perhaps the shock of his death was passing off. Leaving…what? A waiting. A stalking? Dondo had been a competent hunter, once.

  It occurred to Cazaril that while the demon might seek only to fill its two soul-buckets and return to its master, Dondo likely did not share that desire. The belly of his best enemy was a hateful prison to him, but neither the Bastard’s purging hell nor the chilled forgetfulness of a gods-rejected ghost was a very satisfactory alternative fate. Exactly what else might be possible Cazaril could scarcely imagine, but he was intensely aware that if Dondo sought a physical form through which to reenter the world, his own was closest to hand. One way or another. His hands kneaded his belly, and he tried to decide, for the hundredth time, how fast his tumor was really growing.

  The cramps and the wracking quarter hour of terror passed. Iselle’s request returned to his mind. Composing the necessary letter to Ista informing her of her son’s death would be excruciating; little wonder Iselle should desire assistance. Unequal to the task though Cazaril felt himself to be, whatever she asked of him in her grief and devastation he must undertake to supply. He uncurled himself, heaved out of bed, and climbed the stairs.

  He found Iselle already seated at his antechamber desk, his best parchment, pens, and sealing wax laid out before her. Extra candles were lit all around the chamber, driving back the dark. Upon a square of silk, Betriz was just laying out and counting over an odd little pile of ornaments: brooches, rings, and the pale glowing heap of Dondo’s rope of pearls that Cazaril had not yet had opportunity to deliver to the Temple.

  Iselle was frowning down at the blank page and turning her seal ring round and round on her thumb. She glanced up, and said in a low voice, “Good, you’re here. Close the door.”

  He shut it quietly behind him. “At your service, Royesse.”

  “I pray so, Cazaril: I pray so.” Her eyes searched him.

  Betriz said, in a worried voice, “He is so sick, Iselle. Are you sure?”

  “I am sure of nothing but that I have no time left. And no other choices.” She drew a long breath. “Cazaril, tomorrow morning I want you to ride to Ibra as my envoy to arrange my marriage to Royse Bergon.”

  Cazaril blinked, laboring to catch up with a baggage train of thought evidently already far down the road. “Chancellor dy Jironal will never let me leave.”

  “Of course it can’t be openly.” Iselle made an impatient gesture. “So you will ride first to Valenda, which is nearly on the way, as my personal courier to take the news of my brother’s death to my mother. Dy Jironal will agree, delighted, he’ll think, to see the back of you—he’ll doubtless even lend you a courier’s baton by which to commandeer horses from the Chancellery’s posting houses. You know by noon tomorrow he’ll have stuffed my household with his spies.”

  “That was very clear.”

  “But after you stop in Valenda, you’ll ride not back to Cardegoss, but on to Zagosur, or wherever Royse Bergon is to be found. In the meantime, I will insist that Teidez be buried in Valenda, his beloved home.”

  “Teidez couldn’t wait to get out of Valenda,” Cazaril pointed out, beginning to feel dizzy.

  “Yes, well, dy Jironal doesn’t know that, does he? The chancellor would not let me out of Cardegoss and his eye for any other reason, but he cannot deny the demands of family piety. I will enlist Sara’s support in the project, too, first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “You are doubly in mourning now, for your brother and his. He cannot foist another fiancé upon you for months yet.”

  She shook her head. “An hour ago, I became the future of Chalion. Dy Jironal must take and keep hold of me if he means to control that future. The critical moment is not the beginning of my mourning for Teidez, but of the beginning of my mourning for Orico. At which time—and not before—I pass into dy Jironal’s control absolutely. Unless I am married first.

  “Once I’m out of Cardegoss, I mean not to go back. In this weather, Teidez’s cortege could be weeks on the road. And if the weather doesn’t cooperate, I’ll find other delays. By the time you return with Royse Bergon, I should still be safe in Valenda.”

  “Wait, what—return with Royse Bergon?”

  “Yes, of course you must bring him to me. Think it through. If I leave Chalion to be wed in Ibra, dy Jironal will declare me in rebellion, forcing me to return at the head of a column of foreign troops. But if I seize my ground from the very first instant, I will never have to wrest it back. You taught me that!”

  I did…?

  She leaned forward, growing more intent. “I will have Royse Bergon, yes, but I will not give up Chalion to get him, no, not one yard of soil. Not to dy Jironal, and not to the Fox either. These are my terms. Bergon and I will each of us inherit our respective crowns to ourselves. Bergon will hold authority in Chalion as roya-consort, and I will hold authority in Ibra as royina-consort, each through the other, reciprocally and equally. Our future son—the Mother and Father willing—to i
nherit and join them into one crown thereafter. But my future authority in Chalion is to be mine, not made over as dowry to my spouse. I will not be turned into a Sara, a mere and disregarded wife, silenced in my own councils!”

  “The Fox will be greedy for more.”

  Her chin came up. “This is why I must have you as my envoy and no other. If you cannot get me Royse Bergon on terms that do not violate my future sovereignty, then turn around and ride home. And upon Orico’s death, I will raise my banner against dy Jironal myself.” Her mouth set in a grim line; her black shadow roiled. “Curse or no curse, I will not be Martou dy Jironal’s bridled mare to ride to his spurring.”

  Yes—Iselle had the nerve, the will, and the wit to resist dy Jironal as Orico did not; as Teidez would never have. Cazaril could see it in her eyes, could see armies with pennoned lances writhing in the black dark hanging around her like a pall of smoke from a burning town. This was the form that the curse of her House would take in the next generation: not personal sorrow, but civil war between royal and noble faction, tearing the country apart from end to end.

  Unless she could shrug off House and curse both, and pass into the protection of Bergon…

  “I will ride for you, Royesse.”

  “Good.” She sat back and swept her hand over the blank parchments. “Now we must make several letters. The first shall be your letter of authority to the Fox, and I think it should be in my own hand. You’ve read and written treaties. You must tell me all the right phrases, so I do not sound like an ignorant girl.”

  “I’ll do my best, but am no lawyer, Iselle.”

  She shrugged. “If we succeed, I will have swords to back my words. And if we do not, no legal niceties will make them stand. Let them be plain and clear. Begin…”

  A grueling three-quarters of an hour of lip-biting concentration resulted in a clean draft, which Iselle signed with a flourish and sealed with her seal ring. Betriz, meanwhile, had finished collecting and inventorying the little pile of coins and jewelry.