Paladin of Souls

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE SUN WAS BARELY OVER THE HORIZON WHEN LADY Cattilara bustled in ready to escort Ista to the morning temple services, with a ladies' archery contest and a luncheon to follow. This time, Ista had her excuses marshaled and ready.

"I'm afraid I tried to do too much, yesterday. I was feverish and ill last night. I mean to keep quietly to my chambers today and rest. Please do not think that I must be entertained every minute, Marchess."

Lady Cattilara lowered her voice to a confidential tone. "In truth, the town of Porifors has little diversion to offer. We are the frontier, here, and as harsh and simple as the task we must perform. But I have written to my father—Oby is the second town of Caribastos after the provincar's own seat. I am sure my father would be deeply honored to receive you there in a manner more befitting your rank."

"I am unfit to travel anywhere just yet, but when I am, Oby would be a most welcome halt on my return journey." Marginally less exposed than Porifors to the dangers of the border, and rather more heavily manned, Ista could not help reflecting. "That is a decision for another day."

Lady Cattilara nodded sympathetic understanding, but looked pleased at the royina's vaguely worded acceptance. Yes, I would imagine you would be relieved to see me shuffled off elsewhere. Or—something would. Ista studied her.

Outwardly, she seemed the same as ever, all soft green silks and light linens over a body of yielding feminine promise. Inwardly...

Ista glanced at Liss, hovering solicitously to finish dressing Ista's hair and wrap her in her outer garments. A wholesome person had a soul congruent with the body, spirit occluded by the matter that generated and nourished it, and thus nearly as invisible to second sight as to the sight of the eyes. In the present god-touched magnification of her sensitivity, Ista fancied she could perceive, not intellect or emotion, but the state of the soul itself. Liss's was bright, rippling, colorful with swirling energies, and entirely centered. The maid who waited to carry off the wash water had a quieter soul, darkened with a smear of resentment, but equally congruous with the rest of her.

Cattilara's spirit was the darkest and densest, roiling with strain and secret distress. Beneath its surface another boundary lurked, darker and tighter still, like a bead of red glass dropped in a glass of red wine. The demon seemed much more tightly closed this morning than it had last night. Hiding? From what?

From me, Ista realized. The god scars upon her that were invisible to mortal eyes would surely shine like watch fires in the dusk to a demon's peculiar perceptions. But did the demon share all its observations with the mount it rode? How long, indeed, had Lady Cattilara been infested by her passenger? The dying bear had felt ragged, as if its demon were some ravenous tumor spreading tendrils into every part of it, consuming and replacing the bear's soul-stuff with itself. Whatever else Cattilara's soul was, it seemed still mostly her own.

"Did Lord Arhys return safely last night, to your heart's ease?" Ista inquired.

"Oh, yes." Cattilara's smile grew warm and secret.

"Soon your prayers to the Mother will change from supplication to thanksgiving, I'll warrant."

"Oh, I hope it may it be so!" Cattilara signed herself. "My lord has only a daughter—although Liviana is a pretty child, rising nine years old, lives with her maternal grandparents—but I know he longs for a son. If I might bear him one, he would honor me above all women!"

Above, perhaps, the memory of his first wife? Do you compete with a dead woman, girl? The blurred light of retrospective could lend a perfection hard for breathing flesh to match. Despite herself, Ista was moved to pity. "I remember this awkward period of waiting—the monthly disappointments—my mother used to write me severe letters, full of advice on my diet, as if it were my fault that my womb did not fill."

Cattilara's face livened with eager interest. "How unjust! Roya Ias was quite an old man—much older than Arhys." She hesitated curiously, then asked in a shyer voice, "Did you ... do anything special? To get Iselle?"

Ista grimaced in remembered aggravation. "Every lady-in-waiting in the Zangre, whether they'd ever borne a child or not, had a dozen country remedies to press upon me."

Cattilara inquired, with unexpected wryness, "Did they offer any to Ias?"

"A fresh young bride seemed tonic enough for him." At first. Ias's oddly diffident early lustfulness had faded over time and with his otherwise well-concealed disappointment at a girl child's birth. Age and the curse more than accounted for the rest of his problems. Ista suspected that rather than swallowing noxious potions, he had taken to adding a private detour for stimulation by his lover before he visited her chamber. If she had continued infertile, might Lord dy Lutez have persuaded Ias to cut out the middle step and admit him directly to her bed? How long before the relentless expectation would have pressured Ista to compliance? Righteous indignation at such blandishment burned all the hotter when it concealed real temptation, for Arvol dy Lutez had been a striking man. That part, at least, of Cattilara's strange rage at her brother-in-law Illvin presented no block to Ista's understanding whatsoever.

Ista blinked, as a solution to the knotty problem of having Cattilara—

and her demon—underfoot at Illvin's noontime awakening occurred to her. An ugly ploy, but effective. She added smoothly, "For myself, the last thing I tried before I became pregnant with Teidez was the poultice of finger-lily flowers. That remedy was the contribution of Lady dy Vara's old nurse, as I recall. Lady dy Vara swore by it. She'd had six children by then."

Cattilara's gaze grew suddenly intent. "Finger-lilies? I don't believe I know that flower. Does it grow here in the north?"

"I don't know. I thought I saw some growing near the meadow where Lord Arhys had his camp, the other day. Liss would recognize the plant, I'm sure." Behind Cattilara's shoulder, Liss's brows flew up in protest; Ista raised two fingers to command her silence. Ista went on, "The old nurse had it that they must be gathered by the supplicant herself, barefoot, at high noon when the sun is most fecund. Cut with a silver knife while praying to the Mother, the petals wrapped in a band of cheesecloth—or silk, for a lady—and worn about the waist until she next lies with her husband."

"What was the wording of the prayer?" asked Lady Cattilara.

"Nothing special, so long as it was sincere."

"This worked for you?"

"How can one be sure?" In fact, she'd never quacked herself with any of the suggestions she'd been pelted with by her well-wishers. Except for prayer. And we all know how well that worked, in the end. Ista mentally composed her next lure, but was cut short by her fish leaping into her net.

"Royina... since there is to be no ladies' fete this noon... might I borrow your handmaiden Liss to assist me in locating some of these wonderful blooms?"

"Certainly, Marchess." Ista smiled. "I shall rest and write letters."

"I will see you are brought luncheon," Cattilara promised, and curtseyed herself out. To go look for a silver knife and a silk scarf, Ista guessed.

"Royina," Liss hissed, when the marchess's steps had receded down the outside stairs. "I don't know anything about this flower you're talking about."

"Actually, it's a short green shoot that has little flowers dangling in a row, called Mother's bells, but it hardly matters. What I wish of you is that you get the marchess as far away from Porifors as you can persuade her to ride by noon. Let her pick any flower that isn't poisonous." Now, there was another temptation... Ista recalled childhood encounters with blister-ivy and stinging nettle, and smiled grimly. But whatever was going on with Cattilara was deathly serious, and no pretext for japery, no matter how the girl set Ista's teeth on edge. "Mark if she becomes suddenly anxious to return, or otherwise behaves or speaks oddly. Delay her as long as you reasonably may, however you can."

Liss frowned, her brow wrinkling. "Why?"

Ista hesitated. "When the stationmaster hands you a sealed pouch, do you peek inside?"

"No, Royina!" said Liss indignantly "I need you to be my courier in this."

Liss blinked. "Oh." She executed her bow-curtsey.

"The exercise will do the marchess no harm. Though ... it would be well, also, if you are subtle in your misdirection, and take care not to offend her." That the demon dared not show itself before Ista did not guarantee that it dared not show itself at all. Ista had no idea of its powers and limits, yet.

Baffled but obliging, Liss undertook the charge. Ista ate a light breakfast in her room, opened the shutters to the morning light, and settled down with borrowed pens and paper.

First was a short, sharp note to the provincar of Tolnoxo, none too delicately conveying Ista's displeasure with his casual treatment of her courier and his failure more speedily to produce the lost Foix and Learned dy Cabon, and a demand of better assistance to Ferda. A more candid letter to the archdivine of Maradi, pleading for the Temple's aid in searching for the afflicted Foix and his companion. Liss had found her way to Porifors speedily enough; what dire delay could be keeping the pair of them... ?

Ista subdued her pent-up anxiety by penning a letter to Chancellor dy Cazaril in Cardegoss, commending Liss and Ferda and Foix and their company for their recent courage and loyalty. Then a bland missive to Valenda, assuring all of her safety, neglecting to mention any of the unpleasant details of her recent adventures. A somewhat less bland but equally reassuring note to Iselle and Bergon, asserting that she was safe but desiring conveyance... She glanced through the iron grille toward the opposite gallery, and set the last one aside unfinished, not so sure she desired conveyance just yet.

After a time spent thoughtfully tapping her cheek with the feather of her quill, she reopened and added a postscript to the letter to Lord dy Cazaril.

My other sight has returned. There is a difficult situation here.

AT LENGTH, A PAGE APPEARED TO COLLECT LISS FOR HER NOON expedition with the marchess. Sometime after that, a maid arrived with a luncheon for Ista on a tray, accompanied by a gentlewoman of the marchess's retinue evidently detailed to keep Ista company. Ista bade the maid set the tray on the table and leave her, and ruthlessly dismissed the disappointed lady-in-waiting as well. As soon as their footsteps had faded outside, Ista slipped through the outer chamber and out the door. The sun, she noted grimly, shone down high and hot into the stone court, making black accent marks of the shadows. At the opposite end of the gallery, she knocked on Lord Illvin's carved door.

It swung open. Goram's rusty voice began, "Now, did you have that fool of a cook stew the meat softer today—" then died away. "Royina." He gulped and ducked his head, but did not invite her inside.

"Good afternoon, Goram." Ista lifted her hand and pressed the door wide. He gave way helplessly, looking frightened.

The room was dim and cool, but a grid of light fell through the shutters onto the woven rugs, making the muted colors briefly blaze. Ista's eye summed the semblances with her first dream vision, but dismissed them abruptly from her attention when her second sight took in Goram.

His soul was bizarre in appearance, unlike any other that she had yet seen. It reminded her of nothing so much as a tattered cloth that had been splashed with vitriol, or eaten away by moths, until it hung together only by a few strained strings. She thought of the ragged bear. But Goram clearly was not presently demon-infested, nor was he dying. He isn't well, though. Isn't... quite right. She had to wrench her perception back to his gnarled physical surface.

"I wish to speak with your master when he wakes," she told him.

"He, um, don't always talk so's you can make out anything."

"That's all right."

The groom's head drew in upon his shoulders in the turtle hunch again. "Lady Catti, she wouldn't like it."

"Did she chide you yesterday, after I left?" And how fiercely?

He nodded, looking at his feet.

"Well, she's busy now. She has ridden out from the castle. You need not tell her I was here. When the servant brings Lord Illvin's tray, take it and send him away, and no one will know."

"Oh."

He seemed to digest her words a moment, then nodded and shuffled backward, allowing her entry.

Lord Illvin lay upon the bed in his linen robe, his hair unbraided and brushed back as she had first seen it in her dream. Motionless as death, but not stripped of soul-stuff; yet neither was his soul centered and congruent like Liss's, or even like tattered Goram's. It was as though it were being forcibly pulled out from his heart, to stream away in that now-familiar line of white fire. The barest tint of it remained within the confines of his actual body.

Ista took a seat on a chest by the wall to Illvin's right and studied that silent profile. "Will he wake soon?"

"Most likely."

"Carry on as you usually do, then."

Goram nodded nervously and pulled a stool and a small table up to the opposite side of the bed. He jumped up at a knock on the door. Ista leaned back out of view as he accepted a heavy tray covered with a linen towel and sent its bearer off. The manservant sounded relieved to be so dismissed. Goram settled down on his stool, his hands gripping each other, and stared at Lord Illvin. Silence settled thickly over the room.

The line of white fire gradually thinned. Drew down to the merest faint thread. Illvin's body seemed to refill, his soul-stuff deeply dense to Ista's second sight, but churning in complex agitation.

Illvin's lips parted. Abruptly, his breath drew in, then huffed out. His eyes opened to stare wildly at the ceiling. He jerked suddenly upright, his hands covering his face.

"Goram? Goram!" Panic edged his voice.

"Here, m'lord!" said Goram anxiously.

"Ah. There y'are." Illvin's speech was slurred. His shoulders slumped. His rubbed his face, dropped his hands to the coverlet, stared at his feet, the grooves deepening on his high brow. "I had that desperate dream again last night. The shining woman. Five gods, but it was vivid this time. I touched her hair ..."

Goram looked across at Ista. Illvin's head turned to follow his glance.

His dark eyes widened. "You! Who are you? Do I dream still?"

"No. Not this time." She hesitated. "My name is ... Ista. I am here for a reason, but I do not know what it is."

His lips puffed on a painful laugh. "Ah. Me, too."

Goram hastened to arrange his pillows; he fell back into them, as if this little effort had already exhausted him. Goram followed up immediately with a bite of stewed meat on a spoon, redolent with herbs and garlic. "Here's meat, m'lord. Eat, eat, quickly."

Illvin took it in, evidently before he thought to resist; he gulped it down and waved the following bite away. He turned his head toward Ista again. "You don't... shine in the dark, now. Did I dream you?"

"Yes."

"Oh." His brows knotted in bewilderment. "How do you know?" He failed to duck the insistent spoon, and was perforce silenced again.

"Lord Illvin, what do you remember about the night you were stabbed? In Princess Umerue's chambers?"

"Stabbed, me? I was not..." His hand felt beneath his robe for the bandage around his torso. "Curse you, Goram, why do you keep winding this benighted rag around me? I have told you ... I have told you ..." He clawed it away, pulled it loose, flung it down on the foot of the bed. The skin of his chest was unmarked.

Ista stood, came to the bedside, and turned the white cloth over. The dressing pad was soaked with a dull red-brown bloodstain. She angled it toward his gaze, raising her brows. He frowned fiercely and shook his head.

"I have no wound! I have no fever. I do not vomit. Why do I sleep so much? I grow so weak ... I totter like a newborn calf ... I cannot think ....ive gods, please not a palsy-stroke, drooling and crippled ..." His voice sharpened in alarm. "Arhys, I saw Arhys fall at my feet. Blood—where is my brother—?"

Goram's voice went exaggeratedly soothing. "Now, m'lord, now. The march is fine. I've told you that fifty times. I see him every day."

"Why doesn't he come to see me?" Now the slurred tongue was querulous, edging on a whine like an overtired child.

"He does. You're asleep. Don't fret you so." The harried Goram glowered briefly at Ista. "Here. Eat meat."

Arhys was in Umerue's chamber that night, too? Already the tale began to diverge from Cattilara's tidy version. "Did Lord Pechma stab you?" Ista asked.

Illvin blinked in confusion. He gulped down the latest bite Goram inserted, and said, "Pechma? That feckless fool? Is he still here at Porifors? What has Pechma to do with any of this?"

Ista said patiently, "Was Lord Pechma there at all?"

"Where?"

"In Princess Umerue's chamber."

"No! Why should he be? The golden bitch treated him like a slave, same as the rest. Double-dealing... double ..."

Ista's voice sharpened. "Golden bitch? Umerue?"

"Mother and Daughter, but she was cruelly beautiful! Sometimes. But when she forgot to look at me, she was plain. As when I saw her before, in Jokona. But when her amber eyes were on me, I would have played her slave. No, not played. Been. But she turned her eyes on poor Arhys ... all women do... ."

Well, yes...

"She saw him. She wanted him. She took him, as easily as picking up a, up a, something ... I figured it out. I followed. She had him down on the bed. She had her mouth on his ..."

"Meat," said Goram, and shoved in another bite.

An exotic woman, a virile man, a midnight visit, a spurned suitor... the roles the same, but the actors altered from Cattilara's version? Not Pechma but Illvin, the murderous intruder on some intimate scene? It hung together; it was not hard to imagine that Umerue, sent to woo Illvin for the sake of some alliance with Jokona, might for either personal or political reasons switch targets to his elder and more powerful brother. Cattilara was an impediment to such a design, true, but she was just the sort of bump in the road that subtle poisons were designed to smooth away.

What was harder to imagine was any such seductress getting past Cattilara to Lord Arhys in the first place. Cattilara plainly regarded Ista in the light of an elderly aunt, albeit one with a deliciously tragic romantic history, but nevertheless the marchess had made clear her claim on Arhys in every possible way before Ista's eyes. Was her fierce possessiveness just habit—or the result of a recent fright?

The new tale had a weight of likelihood. The despised bastard, half disenfranchised already, having a beautiful princess dangled before his eyes, only to have her suddenly snatched away by an elder brother who had it all including a beautiful wife, with no need of more; the rich, stealing from the poor ... Reason aplenty to attempt fratricide in a jealous rage. Lesser men committed like acts everywhere, Quadrene or Quintarian, of every race and in every clime.

So: Illvin, attacking his brother and his paramour in a fit of jealousy, knifing the bitch-princess, having the weapon wrested from him and knifed in turn by the horrified Arhys, and left for dead in the sheets?

Wait. Illvin carefully stripped naked, his strangely unbloodied clothes neatly piled on a chair, the knife transferred back to Umerue's body, and then left for dead, Ista revised this. Her nose wrinkled in doubt.

Lord Pechma and his horse somehow got rid of, too. Concealment didn't seem Arhys's style, but—suppose he feared a war of reprisal from the prince of Jokona for the death of his beautiful—or plain-sister? Reason enough to steel himself to perform the rearrangements, to cast the blame upon the fled Jokonan courtier. Or murdered and buried Jokonan courtier, as the case might be. Arhys certainly had the strength and nerve for such an act. The misdirection would also have served to conceal Arhys's infidelity from his sleeping wife. Arhys's public prayers and concern for his fallen brother, more misdirection, or the fruit of guilt.

Another nicely tidy tale. It only failed to account for the advent of Cattilara's demon, and one mortal wound seeming to be shared between two brothers. And the fact that Cattilara seemed to know more about what was going on than Arhys did. And Ista's dreams. And the rope of fire. And the visitation of a god. And...

"I believe," said Lord Illvin in a thin voice, "that I am going mad."

"Well," said Ista dryly, "do you desire an experienced conductor on that road? If so, I am your woman."

He squinted at her in utter bewilderment.

From her dream in the tent, she remembered Arhys's wail of woe in a candlelit chamber. But was that an image from the past, or an image from the future?

She had no doubt that the man before her was capable of clever and subtle lies, when he had his wits about him. It was equally clear that his wits had gone away on the road as beggar boys, just now. He might babble or rave or hallucinate, but he did not lie. So ... how many different ways might three people kill two of each other with one knife? Ista rubbed her forehead.

Goram bobbed an unhappy bow at her. "Lady. Please. He must get a chance to eat. And piss."

"No, don't let her go!" Illvin's arm shot out, fell back weakly.

She nodded at the anxious groom. "I will go out for a little. Not far. I'll come back soon," she added to the agitated Illvin. "I promise."

She let herself out onto the gallery and leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. She studied the floating line of light, reduced to a faint thread but still unbroken.

So. Illvin never saw his brother to speak with; Arhys never saw Illvin awake. Since that night, the two had never had a chance to compare their experiences, or whatever fragments they each remembered of their experiences.

Lady Cattilara, however, saw both. Spoke to both. Told whatever tales she pleased, to both.

Let us see if we can change that condition.

Ista waited a while for Goram to finish attending to his master's more intimate needs, to get him back to bed, to hastily stuff whatever foods, made soft for a sick man, down his gullet that time permitted. The rope was beginning to thicken slightly. Then noticeably. She reached out and delicately pinched thumb and forefinger around it in an O.

Lord Bastard, guide me as You will. Or, in Your case, whim.

She willed the rope to shorten, running back through her palm like spun wool. More than just sight had been included in the Bastard's gift, it seemed, for the manipulation seemed effortless. At first she mimed drawing it in hand over hand, but soon discovered she could simply bid it to flow. She kept her eye on the arcade opposite, where the passage came through from the next court.

Lord Arhys strode through onto the sun-splashed stones.

He wore light clothing suited to the hot afternoon, his gray linen vest-cloak with the gold trim swinging about his calves. He was clean, his beard new-trimmed. He yawned hugely, glanced up in concern at the corner room, saw her leaning on the balustrade, and gave her a courtier's bow.

Just wake from a nap, did you? And I know exactly how late you were up last night.

With difficulty, Ista tore her gaze from his elegant surface.

His soul was gray, strangely pale, off center, as if it lagged a little after him and left a trail of smoke.

Ah. Yes. Now I see. Ista stood up straight and moved toward the stairs, to meet him climbing up.

They came face-to-face, with her standing two steps above the tread upon which his booted feet paused. Arhys waited politely, smiling at her in puzzlement. "Royina?"

She took that strong chin in her hand, shivering at the tactile brush of his beard on her palm, leaned forward, and kissed him on the mouth.

His eyes widened, and he made a surprised muffled noise, but he did not retreat. She tasted his mouth: cool as water, and as flavorless. She drew back, sadly. So. That didn't work either.

His lips twisted up in a confused, enchantingly crooked grin, and he cocked his eyebrows at her as if to say, What is this, lady? As if women kissed him spontaneously on staircases every day, and he considered it uncivil to dodge.

"Lord Arhys," said Ista. "How long have you been dead?"