"Fey is a man who looks forward to death. I look back upon mine. I am beyond fey, I think. If this hazard is to be cast at all, it must be soon. In the dark before dawn."
"This
night?" said Illvin. Even he, who had advanced the plan, sounded appalled at its sudden acceleration.
"This very night. We've been shoved most forcefully onto the defensive, and the Jokonans do not look to us, in our present shock, to turn it about. If ever the gods gave me the gift for finding the moment on the field, I swear to you, this is one."
Illvin's lips parted, but no sound came out.
Arhys smiled slightly and turned again to view the walnut grove in the fading light. Though perhaps not fading for him, Ista was reminded. "So, how would I find these sorcerers and not waste time butchering ordinary men?"
Foix cleared his throat. "I can see them."
Behind them, sitting small and cross-legged by the wall again, Liss caught her breath.
Arhys looked across at Foix. "Would you ride out with me, dy Gura? It's a good pairing. I think you are less vulnerable to these sorcerous attacks than any other man here."
"I ... let me look at the ground." Foix, too, advanced to the battlement and leaned upon it, staring down at the camp. Ista saw by the way his eyes opened and closed that he marshaled his second sight to study this challenge.
Arhys turned to Ista. "Royina, can you manage this thing? Neither Illvin nor I will be able to speak to you—we must rely on your judgment when to make or break our links."
lam every kind of afraid. Physically. Magically. Morally.
But mostly the last. "I think I could cut Illvin free of you, yes. What about Cattilara?"
"I would spare her," said Arhys. "Let her sleep."
"To wake a widow? I am not sure that is a betrayal she could ever forgive. She may be young and foolish, but she is not a child now, and will never be a child again. In any case, she must be allowed to wake and eat, that she may lend you strength, and not fail through no fault of her own."
Illvin said, "I fear if she has any hint of this, she will grow quite frenzied. And I doubt her demon will be on our side either."
The stars were coming out, overhead. On the western horizon, glowing pink feathers of cloud were fading to gray. So much indifferent beauty, in the world of matter . . .
"I must take thought for Cattilara," said Ista.
It seems no one else is willing to.
From the deepening shadows, Foix spoke: "Lord Arhys, if you decide to ride out, I will go with you. If the royina will release me to your command."
Ista hesitated for three sick heartbeats. "I release you."
"Thank you, Royina, for this honor," Foix said formally.
"Come," said Arhys to Illvin. "Let us go see if there is enough unbroken gear left in Castle Porifors to outfit this curious hunt. Foix, attend." He turned for the stairs.
Illvin strode back to grasp Ista's hand and lift it to his lips. "I shall see you shortly."
"Yes," whispered Ista. The grip tightened, and was gone.
IT WAS CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT BEFORE LORD ARHYS WENT TO REST in his chambers, so that Cattilara, on the other side of the door, might be roused to eat. His page removed his boots, but no more, and settled by the foot of the bed to guard his repose. Ista thought the exhausted boy would be asleep on the floor before five minutes had passed. Arhys lay back on his bed, eyes wide and dark in the light of the room's sole candle.
"Be tender with her," he pleaded to Ista. "She has had to endure far too much."
"I will use my very best judgment," Ista returned. Arhys accepted her words with a nod. It was Illvin, overseeing the dispositions before returning to the night's too-eventful watch, who cocked a curious eyebrow at her as they turned away.
"Be as careful of her as of her demon, and I don't mean it the way Arhys does," he muttered to Ista. "After that accursed escapade with the wagon, I believe there is no limit to what she would do in pursuit of her ends."
"I will use," said Ista neutrally, "my very best judgment." She let Foix and Liss pass before her into Lady Cattilara's chamber and closed the door upon him, gently but firmly.
The most levelheaded of Cattilara's ladies was just arriving with the meal tray. The haggard look on her face, as well as the care she took setting the food down, told Ista she recognized the cost of it. Ista dismissed her only as far as a seat on a chest. Liss stayed by Ista's elbow as she approached Cattilara's bed.
"Foix, stand by her feet. Keep an eye on her demon," Ista directed. Foix nodded and did so. Ista was unhappy to be demanding yet one more duty of him, when he was so plainly drained to the point of swaying on his feet. He desperately needed to rest for a few hours before the sortie. But Joen had taught her greater caution of demons.
Ista called up her inner sight and closed her hands around the flow of soul-fire from Catti's heart, reducing it to the tiniest trickle of contact with Arhys. Ista imagined the look of life flowing from his face in the next room, and her chest tightened. The demon shadow squirmed in agitation, but did not challenge Ista's control. Cattilara's eyes flew open, and her breath drew in. She sat up abruptly, then swayed, dizzy. Liss pressed a tin cup of water into her hand. By the way she guzzled, pressing it to her dry lips, Ista thought they were none too soon with this sustenance. Liss transferred the tray to a small table by the bedside and drew off the linen cover. Plain fare, and stale, presented on a miscellany of battered old plates.
Catti glared over the cup at Ista and glowered down at the tray. "What is this? Servants' food? Or a prisoner's? Is the mistress of Porifors so dethroned by her usurper, now?"
"It is the last and best untainted food in the keep, reserved for you. We are now surrounded by a Jokonan army and besieged by a troop of sorcerers. Their demon magic is chewing everything within these walls to pieces and spitting it out upon us. All the water is gone. The meat seethes with maggots. Half the courts are burned, and a third of the horses lie dead. Men are dying tonight below us of disease and injury without ever having come within bowshot of Joen and Sordso's troops. Joen's new way of making war is ingenious, cruel, and effective. Extraordinarily effective. So eat, because it is the only meal Arhys will have tonight."
Cattilara gritted her teeth, but at least she gritted them on her first bite of dry bread. "We could have fled. We should have fled! I could have had Arhys forty miles from here by now, and out of this. Curse you for a lack-witted bitch!"
Foix and Liss stirred at the insult, but Ista's raised hand stayed them. "Arhys would not have thanked you. And who is
we?
Are you even certain whose voice speaks from inside your head right now? Eat."
Catti gnawed, gracelessly, but too driven by her ferocious waking hunger to spurn the proffered meal. Liss kept the water coming, for Cattilara's sunken features betrayed how dangerously parched she had grown. Ista let her chew and swallow for several minutes, until she began visibly to slow.
"Later tonight," Ista began again, "Arhys rides out on a hazardous sortie, a gamble to save us all. Or die trying."
"You mean him to die," Catti mumbled. "You hate him. You hate me."
"You are twice mistaken, though I admit to a strong desire to slap you at times. Now, for instance. Lady Cattilara, you are the wife of a soldier-commander and the daughter of a soldier-commander. You cannot possibly have been raised, here in this dire borderland, to such wild self-indulgence."
Cattilara looked away, perhaps to conceal a flash of shame in her face. "This stupid war has always dragged on. It will always drag on. But once Arhys is gone, he's gone
forever.
And all the good in the world goes with him. The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!"
"I have cursed them for years," said Ista dryly. "Turnabout being fair." Cattilara was furious, distraught, writhing in overwhelming pain. But was she divorced altogether from reason?
So what is reality now, here in this waking nightmare? Where is reason? Absurd, that I of all women should insist on reason.
"Keep chewing." Ista straightened her weary back, crossed her arms. "I have a proposition for you."
Cattilara glowered in suspicion.
"You may accept or refuse, but you may not have other choices. It quite resembles a miracle, in that regard. Arhys rides out tonight against Joen's sorcerers. Illvin has volunteered to accept his wounds, to the point of death. It seems to me that
two
bodies, both nourishing Arhys's sword arm and bearing his hurts, would carry him farther than one. Perhaps just the needed edge, that little difference between almost succeeding, and almost failing. You can be a part of his ride, or you can be shut out of it."
Foix, startled, said, "Royina, Lord Arhys would not desire this!"
"Quite," said Ista coolly. "No one else here will offer you this choice, Cattilara."
"You cannot do this behind his back!" said Foix.
"I am the appointed executor of this rite. This is women's business now, Foix. Be silent. Cattilara"—Ista drew breath—"widow you are and shall be, but the grief you will carry into the rest of your life will be different depending on the choices you make tonight."
"How better?" snarled Cattilara. Tears were leaking from her eyes now. "Without Arhys, all is ashes."
"I didn't say better. I said, different. You may accept the part apportioned to you, or you may lie down and be passed over. If you do not take your part, and he fails, you will never, ever know whether you might have made the difference. If you accept the part, and he still falls—then you will know that, too.
"Arhys would have protected you from this choice, as a father would a beloved child. Arhys is wrong in this. I give you a woman's choice, here, at the last gasp. He looks to spare you pain this night. I look to your nights for the next twenty years. There is neither right nor wrong in this, precisely. But the time to amend all choices runs out like Porifors's water."
"You think he will die in this fight," grated Cattilara.
"He's been dead for three months. I did not war against his death,
but against his damnation. I have lost. In my lifetime, I have looked two gods in the eye, and it has seared me, till I am afraid of almost nothing in the world of matter. But I am afraid of this, for him. He stands this night on the edge of the true death, the death that lasts forever, and there is none to pull him back from that precipice. Not even the gods can save him if he falls now."
"Your choice is no choice. It's death all ways."
"No: death in different ways. You had more of him than any woman alive. Now the wheel turns. Be assured, someday it will turn for you. All are equal in this. He goes first, but not uniquely. Nor alone, for he will have a large Jokonan escort, I do think."
"He will if I have anything to do with it," growled Foix.
"Yes. Do you imagine not one of them is also beloved, as Arhys is? You have a chance to let Arhys go out in serenity, with his mind clear and unimpeded, concentrated as the sword which is his symbol. I will not give you leave to send him off harassed and dismayed, distracted and grieved."
Cattilara snarled, "Why should I give him up to death—or to the gods, or to you, or to anyone? He's
mine.
All my life is his."
"Then you shall be hollow and echoing indeed, when he is gone."
"This disaster is not my doing! If people had just done things my way, this all could have been averted. Everyone is against me—"
The food on the tray was all gone. Sighing, Ista touched her ligature, and opened the channel wide once more. Cattilara sank back, cursing. The flow of soul-fire from Catti's heart was slow and surly, but it would suffice for the next few hours.
"I would have liked to give her a chance to say good-bye," said Ista sadly. "Lord Illvin's remarks on kisses withheld and words unspoken weigh much on my mind."
Foix, his face appalled, said,
"Her
remarks were better left unspoken to Lord Arhys just now, I think."
"So I judged. Five gods, why was I appointed to this court? Go, Foix, get what rest you may. It is your most urgent duty now."
"Aye, Royina." He glanced at Liss. "Will you come down to see us off? Later on?"
"Yes," whispered Liss.
Foix started to speak, seemed to find his throat strangely uncooperative, nodded thanks, and bowed his way out.
* * *
ISTA, TOO, EVENTUALLY WENT TO LIE DOWN IN HER CHAMBERS FOR A few hours. She longed for a dreamless slumber, feared the sleep of dreams, but in any case merely dozed, disquieted by the occasional agonized noises that filtered in through her lattice from a castle disintegrating, it seemed, about all their ears. At length Liss, drawn face candlelit by a stub in a brass holder whose glass vase lay in shards somewhere, came to rouse her. Ista was already awake and dressed. The bleak mourning garb was growing dirty and frayed, but its black robe suited her mood and the shadows of this hour.
Liss followed her, holding up the meager light, as Ista eased out the door onto the gallery. She took three steps down the empty stairs, and stopped. Her breath caught.
A tall, somber man stood on the treads two below her, so that his face was level with hers, in precisely the position she had kissed and challenged the dead Arhys, half a lifetime ago here. His face and form were uncertain in outline; she thought he looked a bit like Arhys, a bit like Arvol, and more than a little like her own dead father, though dy Baocia had been a shorter, thicker man. He was not much, she thought, like Ias.
He was dressed as an officer of Porifors, in mail and a gray-and-gold tabard; but the mail gleamed, and the tabard was pressed and perfect, its embroidery bright as fire. His hair and beard were pure gray, cut short as Arhys's were, clean and fine. The wavering candlelight did not reflect from his upturned face, nor from the endless depths of his eyes; they shone instead with their own effulgent light.
Ista swallowed, raised her chin. Stiffened her knees. "I wasn't expecting
You
here."