The Curse of Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Lips, eh?” he murmured, and fastened his to hers.

  Pausing for breath some time later, she pulled her head back and happily rubbed her chin, then his. “And now your kisses do not make me itch!”

  IT WAS LATE THE FOLLOWING MORNING BEFORE Cazaril was at last able to seek out Umegat at the Bastard’s house. A respectful acolyte ushered him to a pair of rooms on the third floor; the tongueless groom, Daris, answered the knock and bowed Cazaril inside. Cazaril was not surprised to find him wearing the garb of a lay dedicat of the order, tidy and white. Daris rubbed his chin and gestured at Cazaril’s bare face, uttering some smiling remark that Cazaril was just as glad he could not make out. The thumbless man beckoned him through the chamber, furnished up as a sitting room, and out to a little wooden balcony, festooned with twining vines and rose geraniums in pots, overlooking the Temple Square.

  Umegat, also dressed in clean white, sat at a tiny table in the cool shade, and Cazaril was thrilled to see paper and quill and ink before him. Daris hastily brought a chair, that Cazaril might sit before Umegat could try to rise. Daris mouthed an inviting hum; Umegat interpreted an offer of hospitality, and Cazaril agreed to tea, which Daris bustled away to fetch.

  “What’s this?” Cazaril waved eagerly at the papers. “Have you your writing back?”

  Umegat grimaced. “So far, I seem to be back to age five. Would that some of the rest of me was so rejuvenated.” He tilted the page to show a labored exercise of crudely drawn letters. “I keep putting them back in my mind, and they keep falling out again. My hand has lost its cleverness for the quill—and yet I can still play the lute nearly as badly as ever! The physician insists that I am improving, and I suppose it is so, for I could not do so little as this a month ago. The words scuttle about on the page like crabs, but every so often I catch one.” He glanced up, and shrugged away his struggles. “But you! Great doings in Taryoon, were they not? Mendenal says you had a sword stuck through you.”

  “Punctured front to back,” admitted Cazaril. “But it carved out Lord Dondo and the demon, which made it altogether worth the pain. The Lady spared me from the killing fever, after.”

  Umegat glanced after Daris. “Then you got off lightly.”

  “Miraculously so.”

  Umegat leaned a little forward across the table and gazed closely into his face. “Hm. Hm. You’ve been keeping high company, I see.”

  “Have you your second sight back?” asked Cazaril, startled.

  “No. It’s just a look a man gets, that one learns to recognize.”

  Indeed. Umegat had it, too. It seemed that if a man was god-touched, and yet not pushed altogether off-balance, it left him mysteriously centered thereafter. “You have seen your god, too.” It was not a question.

  “Once or twice,” Umegat admitted.

  “How long does it take to recover?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Umegat rubbed his lips thoughtfully, studying Cazaril. “Tell me—if you can—what you saw…?”

  It was not just the learned theologian talking shop; Cazaril saw the flash of fathomless god-hunger in the Roknari’s gray eyes. Do I look like that, when I speak of Her? No wonder men look at me strangely.

  Cazaril told the tale, starting from his precipitate departure from Cardegoss riding to the royesse’s ordering. Tea arrived, was consumed, and the cups refilled before he came to the end of it. Daris hunkered in the doorway, listening; Cazaril supposed he need not ask after the ex-groom’s discretion. When he tried to describe his gathering-in by the Lady, he became tongue-tangled. Umegat hung on his halting words, lips parted.

  “Poetry—poetry might do it,” said Cazaril. “I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.”

  “Hm,” said Umegat. “I tried to recapture the god with music, for a time, after my first…experience. I had not the gift, alas.”

  Cazaril nodded. He asked diffidently, “Is there anything you—either of you—need, that I can command? Iselle has yesterday made me chancellor of Chalion, so I suppose I can command, well, rather a lot.”

  Umegat’s brows flicked up; he favored Cazaril with a little congratulatory bow, from his seat. “That was well done of the young royina.”

  Cazaril grimaced. “I keep thinking about dead men’s boots, actually.”

  Umegat’s smile glimmered. “I understand. As for us, the Temple cares for its ex-saints reasonably well, and supplies us all that we can presently use. I like these rooms, this city, this spring air, my company. I hope the god will yet grant me an interesting task or two, before I’m done. Although, by preference, not with animals. Or royalty.”

  Cazaril made a motion of sympathy. “I suppose you knew poor Orico as well as almost anyone, except perhaps Sara.”

  “I saw him nearly every day for six years. He spoke to me most frankly, toward the end. I hope I was a consolation to him.”

  Cazaril hesitated. “For what it’s worth, I came to the conclusion that he was something of a hero.”

  Umegat nodded briefly. “So did I. In a frustrating sort of way. He was a sacrifice, surely.” He sighed. “Well, it is a particular sin to permit grief for what is gone to poison the praise for what blessings remain to us.”

  The tongueless man rose from his silent spot to take away the tea things.

  “Thank you, Daris,” said Umegat, and patted the hand that touched him briefly on the shoulder; Daris gathered up the cups and plates and padded off.

  Cazaril stared curiously after him. “Have you known him long?”

  “About twenty years.”

  “Then he was not just your assistant in the menagerie…” Cazaril lowered his voice. “Was he martyred back then?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Oh.”

  Umegat smiled. “Don’t look so glum, Lord Cazaril. We get better. That was yesterday. This is today. I shall ask his permission to tell you the tale of it sometime.”

  “I should be honored with his confidence.”

  “All is well, and if it’s not, then at least each day brings us closer to our god.”

  “I had noticed that. I had a little trouble tracking time, the first few days after…after I saw the Lady. Time, and scale, both altered out of reckoning.”

  A light knock sounded upon the chamber door. Daris emerged from the other room and went to admit a white-smocked young dedicat who held a book in her hand.

  “Ah.” Umegat brightened. “It is my reader. Make your bow to the Lord Chancellor, Dedicat.” He added in explanation, “They send a delinquent dedicat to read to me for an hour a day, as a light punishment for small infractions of the house rules. Have you decided what rule you mean to break tomorrow, girl?”

  The dedicat grinned sheepishly. “I’m thinking, Learned Umegat.”

  “Well if you run out of ideas, I will harken back to my youth and see if I can’t remember a few more.”

  The dedicat tipped the book toward Cazaril. “I thought I would be sent to read dull theology to the divine, but instead he wanted this book of tales.”

  Cazaril glanced over the volume, an Ibran import judging by the printer’s mark, with interest.

  “It’s a fine conceit, “ said Umegat. “The author follows a group of travelers to a pilgrimage shrine, and has each one tell his or her tale in turn. Very, ah, holy.”

  “Actually, my lord,” the dedicat whispered, “some of them are very lewd.”

  “I see I must dust off Ordol’s sermon on the lessons of the flesh. I have promised the dedicat time off from the Bastard’s penances for her blushes. I fear she believes me.” Umegat smiled.

  “I, ah…should be very pleased to borrow that book, when you’re finished with it,” Cazaril said hopefully.

  “I’ll have it sent up to you, my lord.”

  Cazaril made his farewells. He recrossed the five-sided Temple Square and headed uphill, but turned aside before the Zangre came in sight and made his way to
Provincar dy Baocia’s town palace. The blocky old stone building resembled Jironal Palace, though much smaller, with no windows on its lower floor, and its next floor’s casements protected by wrought-iron grilles. It had been reopened not only for its lord and lady but also the old Provincara and Lady Ista, who had arrived from Valenda. Full to bursting, its former sullen empty silence was turned to bustle. Cazaril stated his rank and business to a bowing porter, and was whisked inside without question or delay.

  The porter led him to a high sunny chamber at the back of the house. Here he found Dowager Royina Ista sitting out on a little iron-railed balcony overlooking the small herb garden and stable mews. She dismissed her attendant woman and gestured Cazaril to the vacated chair, almost knee to knee with her. Ista’s dun hair was neatly braided today, wreathing her head; both her face and her dress seemed somehow crisper, more clearly defined than Cazaril had ever seen them before.

  “This is a pleasant place,” Cazaril observed, easing himself down in the chair.

  “Yes, I like this room. It is the one I had when I was a girl, when my father brought us up to the capital with him, which was not often. Best of all, I cannot see the Zangre from it.” She gazed down into the domestic square of garden, embroidered with green, protected and contained.

  “You came to the banquet there last night.” He had only been able to exchange a few formal words with her in that company, Ista merely congratulating him on his chancellorship and his betrothal, and departing early “You looked very well, too, I must say. I could see Iselle was gratified.”

  She inclined her head. “I eat there to please her. I do not care to sleep there.”

  “I suppose the ghosts are still about. I cannot see them now, to my great relief.”

  “Nor I, with sight or second sight, but I feel them as a chill in the walls. Or perhaps it’s just the memory of them that chills me.” She rubbed her arms as if to warm them. “I abhor the Zangre.”

  “I understand the poor ghosts much better now than when they first terrified me,” said Cazaril diffidently. “I thought their exile and erosion was a rejection by the gods, at first, a damnation, but now I know it for a mercy. When the souls are taken up, they remember themselves…the minds possess their lives all whole, all at once, as the gods do, with nearly the terrible clarity that matter remembers itself. For some…for some that heaven would be as unbearable as any hell, and so the gods release them to forgetfulness.”

  “Forgetfulness. That smudged oblivion seems a very heaven to me now. I pray to be such a ghost, I think.”

  I fear it is a mercy you shall be denied. Cazaril cleared his throat. “You know the curse is lifted off of Iselle and Bergon, and all, and banished out of Chalion?”

  “Yes. Iselle has told me of it, to the limit of her understanding, but I knew it when it happened. My ladies were dressing me to go down to the Daughter’s Day morning prayers. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear or feel, but it was as though a fog had lifted from my mind. I did not realize how closely it had cloaked me round, like a clammy mist on the skin of my soul, till it was lifted. I was sorry then, for I thought it meant you had died.”

  “Died indeed, but the Lady put me back into the world. Well, into my body. My friend Palli would have it that She put me back in upside down.” His smile flickered.

  Ista looked away. “The curse’s lifting made my pain more clear, and yet more distant. It felt very strange.”

  He cleared his throat. “You were right, Lady Ista, about the prophecy. The three deaths. I was wrong with my marriage scheme, wrong and determined to be so, because I was afraid. Your way seemed too hard. And yet it came right despite myself, in the end, by the Lady’s grace.”

  She nodded. “I would have done it myself, if I could have. My sacrifice was evidently not deemed acceptable.” Bitterness tinged her voice.

  “It was not a matter of—that’s not the reason,” protested Cazaril. “Well, it is but it isn’t. It has to do with the shape of your soul, not its worthiness. You have to make a cup of yourself, to receive that pouring out. You are a sword. You were always a sword. Like your mother and your daughter, too—steel spines run in the women of your family. I realize now why I never saw saints, before. The world does not crash upon their wills like waves upon a rock, or part around them like the wake of a ship. Instead they are supple, and swim through the world as silently as fishes.”

  Her brows rose at him, though whether in agreement, disagreement, or some polite irony he was not sure.

  “Where will you go now?” he asked her. “Now that you are better, that is.”

  She shrugged. “My mother grows frail. I suppose we shall reverse chairs, and I shall attend upon her in the castle of Valenda as she attended upon me. I should prefer to go somewhere that I have never been before. Not Valenda, not Cardegoss. Someplace with no memories.”

  He could not argue with this. He thought on Umegat, not exactly her spiritual superior, but so experienced in loss and woe as to have recovery down to nearly a routine. Ista had yet another twenty years to find her way to a balance like that. At about the age Ista was now, retrieving the broken body of his friend from whatever episode of horrors had shattered him, perhaps Umegat had railed and wailed as heart-rendingly as she had, or cursed the gods as coldly as her frozen silences. “I shall have to have you meet my friend Umegat,” he told Ista. “He was the saint given to preserve Orico. Ex-saint, now, as you and I are, too. I think…I think you and he could have some interesting conversations.”

  She opened her hand, warily, neither encouraging this idea nor denying its possibility. Cazaril resolved to pursue their introduction, later.

  Attempting to turn her thoughts to happier matters, he asked after Iselle’s coronation, which Ista and the proud and eager Provincara had arrived in Cardegoss just in time to attend. He’d so far asked some four or five people to describe it to him, but he hadn’t grown tired of the accounts yet. She grew animated for a little, her delight in her daughter’s victory softening her face and illuminating her eyes. The fate of Teidez lay between them untouched, as if by mutual assent. This was not the day to press those tender wounds, lest they break and bleed anew; some later, stronger hour would be time enough to speak of the lost boy.

  At length, he bowed his head and made to bid her good day. Ista, suddenly urgent, leaned forward to touch him, for the first time, upon his hand.

  “Bless me, Cazaril, before you go.”

  He was taken aback. “Lady, I am no more saint now than you are, and surely not a god, to call down blessings at my will.” And yet…he wasn’t a royesse, either, but he had borne the proxy for one to Ibra, and made binding contract in her name. Lady of Spring, if ever I served You, redeem Your debt to me now. He licked his lips. “But I will try.”

  He leaned forward, and placed his hand on Ista’s white brow. He did not know where the words came from, but they rose to his lips nonetheless.

  “This is a true prophecy, as true as yours ever were. When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sundered, but shall be the prize of the gods’ gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.”

  He sat back and shut his mouth abruptly, as a surge of terror ran through him. Is it well, is it ill, am I a fool?

  Ista’s eyes filled with tears that did not fall. Her hand, cupped upward upon her knee, grew still. She ducked her head in clumsy acceptance, as awkwardly as a child taking its first step. In a shaken voice she said, “You do that very well, Cazaril, for a man who claims to be an amateur.”

  He swallowed, nodded back, smiled, took his leave, and fled into the street. As he turned up the hill, his stride lengthened despite the slope. His ladies would be waiting.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Author would like to thank Professor William D. Phillips, Jr., for History 3714, the most useful four hundred dollars and ten weeks I ever spent in school; Pat “Oh, c’mon, it’ll be fun” Wrede for the letter game that first drew the pr
oto-Cazaril, blinking and stumbling, from my back-brain into the light of day; and, I suppose, the utility companies of Minneapolis for that hot shower one cold February, where the first two items collided unexpectedly in my head to create a new world and all the people in it.

  About the Author

  One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, LOIS McMASTER BUJOLD burst onto the scene in 1986 with Shards of Honor, the first of her tremendously popular Vorkosigan Saga novels. She has received numerous accolades and prizes, including the Nebula Award (for Falling Free), three Hugo Awards for Best Novel (The Vor Game, Barrayar, and Mirror Dance), as well as the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novella Mountains of Mourning. Her short story, “Labyrinth,” won first place in Analog Magazine's annual awards. The mother of two, Ms. Bujold lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Other books by Lois McMaster Bujold

  THE SPIRIT RING

  FALLING FREE

  SHARDS OF HONOR

  BARRAYAR

  THE WARRIOR’S APPRENTICE

  THE VOR GAME

  CETAGANDA

  ETHAN OF ATHOS

  BORDERS OF INFINITY

  BROTHERS IN ARMS

  MIRROR DANCE

  MEMORY

  KOMARR

  A CIVIL CAMPAIGN

  Credits

  Jacket design Doug Beekman

  Jacket art by Doug Beekman

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE CURSE OF CHALION. Copyright © 2001 by Lois M. Bujold. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.