Liss, who'd been riding along with her feet out of the stirrups and her reins slack, turned her head to listen.
"Oh, all went well. I gave it up to the archdivine of Taryoon, and we oversaw its disposition. It is safely out of the world now. I was actually returning to my home from there when I spent the night in Valenda, and, well." A jerk of his head at the string of riders trailing them indicated his unexpected new duty with the royina.
"A demon? You had a demon?" said Liss in a tone of wonder.
"Not
I
," corrected the divine fastidiously. "It was trapped in a ferret. Fortunately, not a difficult animal to control. Compared to a wolf or a bull." He grimaced. "Or a man, seeking to plunder the demon's powers."
Her face screwed up. "How do you send a demon out of the world?"
Dy Cabon sighed. "Give it to someone who's going."
She frowned at her horse's ears for a moment, then gave up the riddle. "What?"
"If the demon is not grown too strong, the simplest way to return it to the gods is to give it into the keeping of a soul who is going to the gods. Who is dying," he added to her blank look.
"Oh," she said. Another pause. "So . . . you slew the ferret?"
"It is, alas, not quite so easy as that. A free demon whose mount is dying simply jumps to another. You see, an elemental escaped into the world of matter cannot exist without a being of matter to lend it intelligence and strength, for by its nature it cannot create such order for itself. It can only steal. In the beginning it is mindless, formless, as innocently destructive as a wild animal, at least until it learns more complicated sins from men. It is constrained in turn by the power of the creature or person upon whom it battens. A dislodged demon will always seek to leap to the strongest soul in its vicinity, creature to larger creature, animal to man, man to greater man, for it becomes what it... eats, in a sense." Dy Cabon drew breath and seemed to look into some well of memory. "But when a divine of long experience is finally dying in his or her order's house, the demon can be forced to jump to them. If the demon is weak enough, and the divine strong of heart and mind even in the last extremity, well, the matter solves itself." He cleared his throat. "Persons great-souled and grown detached from the world, and longing for their god. For a demon can tempt a weaker person to sorcery with promises to extend life."
"Rare strength," said Ista after a moment. Had he just come from such an extraordinary deathbed scene? It seemed so. She did not wonder at his air of daunted humility.
Dy Cabon gave a wry shrug of acknowledgment. "Yes. I don't know if I will ever . . . Fortunately, stray demons are rare. Except that..."
"Except what?" Liss prodded, when no more of this rarified theological discourse seemed to be forthcoming.
Dy Cabon's lips twisted. "The archdivine was most disturbed. Mine was the third such fugitive that has been captured this year in Baocia alone."
"How many do you usually catch?" asked Liss.
"Not one a year in all of Chalion, or so it has been for many years. The last great outbreak was in Roya Fonsa's day."
Ias's father; Iselle's grandfather, dead these fifty years.
Ista considered dy Cabon's words. "What if the demon is not weak enough?"
Dy Cabon said, "Ah. Indeed." He was silent for a moment, staring at his mule's limp ears, hanging out to either side of its head like oars. "That is why my order gives much thought and effort to removing them when they are still small."
The road narrowed then, curving down to a small stone bridge over a greenish stream, and dy Cabon gave Ista a polite salute and pushed his mule ahead.
THE NEXT DAY'S RIDING BEGAN EARLY AND RAN LONG, BUT slowly the barrens of Baocia fell away behind them. The country grew more rolling, better watered, and better wooded, running up toward the mountains just visible on the western horizon. It was still a bony land at heart.
The town wall of Casilchas hugged a rocky outcrop above a stream running clear and chill with spring runoff from the distant heights. Gray and ochre stone, rough or dressed, formed both walls and buildings, here and there enlivened with plaster dyed pink or pale green, or with painted wooden doors or shutters, rich red or blue or green in the angled light of the late-spring afternoon.
One might drink this light like wine and grow intoxicated on color,
Ista thought, as their horses clopped down the narrow streets.
The town's temple fronted a small plaza paved with irregular slabs of granite fitted together like a puzzle. Opposite it, in what had the look of some local aristocrat's old mansion bequeathed to the order, Ista's party found the Bastard's seminary.
A smaller hatch in the ironbound slab-planked double doors opened at dy Cabon's pounding, and the porter came out. He met the divine's first greetings with discouraging headshaking. Dy Cabon disappeared inside for a few minutes. Then both doors swung wide, and grooms and dedicats scurried to assist the party with horses and baggage. Ista's horse was led within. Three stories of ornate wooden balconies rose above a cobbled courtyard. A white-gowned acolyte hurried up with a mounting block. A senior divine bowed and offered humble welcome. It was Sera dy Ajelo's name he spoke, but Ista had no illusions; it was Ista dy Chalion to whom he scraped. Dy Cabon might have been less discreet than she wished, but there was no doubt it won them better rooms, eager servants, and the best care for their tired mounts.
Wash water was brought almost on their heels to the room where Ista and Liss were guided. No rooms at the seminary were large, Ista suspected, but theirs had space for a bed, a truckle bed, and a table and chairs, with a balcony overlooking the town wall and the stream behind this main building. Meals for both women were brought soon thereafter on trays, with hastily arranged pots of blue and white flowers for the season as well.
After supper Ista took her handmaiden, with Ferda and Foix for escort, and strolled around the town in the fading light. The two officer-dedicats made a handsome pair, in their blue tunics and gray cloaks, swords carried with circumspection, not swagger; and not a few Casilchas maidens'—and matrons'—heads turned as they passed. Liss's stride and height nearly matched that of the dy Gura brothers, a display of youth and health to make silks and jewels look like tawdry toys. Ista felt herself as splendidly attended as ever she had been at the roya's court.
The temple was of the standard plan, if of small scale: four domed lobes, one for each member of the Holy Family, around an open court where the holy fire burned on its central hearth, with the Bastard's Tower freestanding behind His Mother's court. The walls were built of the native gray stone, though the roof arches were finely carved wood, with a small riot of brightly painted demons, saints, holy animals, and plants appropriate to each god cavorting along the beams. For lack of any better entertainment, they all attended the evening services there.
Ista was weary of the gods, but she had to admit, the singing was a pleasure; the seminary contributed a white-robed and enthusiastic choir. The pious effect was only slightly spoiled by the choir leader peeking periodically at Ista for her reaction. Ista sighed inwardly and made sure to smile and nod, to assuage the woman's anxiety.
Three days of riding had tired both people and animals; tomorrow both would rest here. A little elusive ease seemed to have crept in to Ista's spirit—whether its source was sunlight, exercise, cheerful young company, or distance from Valenda, she hardly knew, but she was grateful for it. She slid her body under the feather quilt, finding the narrow bed more luxurious than many more ornate but less comfortable ones in royal castles, and fell asleep before Liss stopped rolling over in her truckle.
* * *
ISTA DREAMED, AND KNEW SHE WAS DREAMING.
She crossed a paved castle courtyard in a late-spring or early-summer noon. A stone-arched walk ran around the court's edge, the fine alabaster pillars carved with a tracery of vines and flowers in the Roknari style. The sun shone down high and hot; the shadows were black accent marks at her feet. She climbed—no, floated—up the stone stairs at the end, leading up over the arched walk to a wooden gallery, and along it. At the far end, a room: she passed softly into it without opening the carved door, which seemed to part and close around her skin like water.
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. In the room, a bed; on the bed, a form. Ista drifted closer, like a ghost.
The form was a man, asleep or dead, but very pale and still. His long, lean body was dressed in an undyed linen robe, folded across his chest and bound at the waist with a linen belt. On his left breast, a patch of dark red blood seeped through the cloth.
Despite the wiry length of his frame the bones of his face were almost delicate: brow wide, jaw fine, chin somewhat pointed. His skin was unmarred by scar or blemish, but faint lines pressed across the forehead, framed the lips, fanned from the eyes. His dark, straight hair was brushed back from his forehead, the hairline high, receding; it flowed down over the pillow to his shoulders like a river of night, rippling with tiny gleams of moonlight from the silver threads. His brows were arched, winging; nose straight; lips parted.
Ista's ghostly hands unbound the belt, folded back the linen robe. The hair trailing down his chest was sparse, until it thickened at his crotch. The bird that nested there was fine and fair, and Ista smiled. But the wound beneath his left breast gaped like a small, dark mouth. As she watched, blood began to well from it.
She pressed her hands over the dark slit to staunch the flow, but the red liquid oozed up between her white fingers, a sudden flood, washing across his chest, spreading in a scarlet tide across the sheets. His eyes flew open, he saw her, and he gasped.
Ista woke, shot up, pressed her knuckles to her mouth to stifle her cry. She expected to taste blood, hot and sticky, and was almost shocked not to. Her body was drenched in sweat. Her heart was hammering, and she was panting as though she had been running.
The room was dark and cool, but moonlight filtered through the shutter slats. On her truckle, Liss muttered and turned over.
It had been one of
those
dreams. The real ones. There was no mistaking them.
Ista clutched her hair, opened her mouth in a rictus, screamed silently. Breathed,
"Curse You.
Whichever one of You this is. Curse You, one and five. Get out of my head. Get out of my head!"
Liss made a little cat sound and mumbled sleepily, "Lady? You all right?" She sat up on her elbow, blinking.
Ista swallowed for control and cleared her tight throat. "Just an odd dream. Go back to sleep, Liss."
Liss grunted agreeably and rolled back over.
Ista lay back, clutching her feather coverlet to her despite her sweat-dampened body.
Was it starting again?
No. No. I won't have it.
She gasped and gulped, and barely kept from breaking into sobs. In a few minutes, her breathing steadied.
Who had that man been? It was no one she had ever seen in her life, she was certain. She would know him instantly if she ever saw him again, though; the fine shape of his face felt burned into her mind like a brand. And . . . and the rest of him. Was he enemy? Friend? Warning? Chalionese, Ibran, Roknari? Highborn or low? What did the sinister red tide of blood mean? No good thing, of that she was quite certain.
Whatever You want from me, I can't do it. I've proved that before. Go away. Go away.
She lay trembling for a long time; the moonlight had turned to gray predawn mist before she fell asleep again.
* * *
ISTA WAS AWAKENED NOT BY LISS SLIPPING OUT, BUT BY LISS SLIPPING back in. She was embarrassed to discover her handmaiden had let her sleep through morning prayers, rudeness both as a pilgrim, however false, and as a real guest.
"You looked so tired," Liss excused herself when Ista chided her. "You did not seem to sleep well last night."
Indeed.
Ista had to admit, she was glad for the extra rest. A breakfast was brought to her on a tray by a bowing acolyte, also not usual for a pilgrim so laggard as to miss the morning's start.
After dressing and having her hair done up in a slightly more elaborate braid than usual—not looking too much like a horse, she hoped—she walked with Liss about the old mansion. They fetched up in the now-sunny court. Sitting on a bench by the wall, they watched the denizens of the school hurry past on their tasks, students and teachers and servants.
Another
thing Ista liked about Liss, she decided, was that the girl didn't chatter. She conversed pleasantly enough when spoken to; the remainder of the time she fell without resentment into a restful silence.
Ista felt a cool breath on her neck from the wall she leaned against: one of this place's ghosts. It wove around her like a cat seeking a lap, and she almost raised her hand to shoo it away, but then the impression faded. Some sad spirit, not taken up by the gods, or refusing them, or lost somehow. New ghosts kept the form they'd had in life, for a while, often violent, harsh, outraged, but in time they all came to this faded, shapeless, slow oblivion. For such an old building, the ghosts here seemed few and tranquil. Fortresses—like the Zangre—were usually the worst. Ista was resigned to her lingering sensitivity, as long as no such wasted souls took form before her inner eye.
Seeing
such a spirit would mean some god breathed too near, that her second sight was leaking back—and all that went with it.
Ista considered the courtyard in her dream. It was no place she'd ever been before, of that she was sure. She was equally convinced it was a real place. To avoid it ... to certainly avoid it, all she had to do was crawl back to the castle at Valenda and stay there till her body rotted around her.
No.
I will not go back
.
The thought made her restless, and she rose and prowled the school, Liss dutifully at her heels. Many acolytes or divines, passing her on the balcony walks or in the corridors, bowed and smiled, by which she concluded dy Cabon's indiscretion had now been widely shared. Pretending to be Sera dy Ajelo was well enough; having half a hundred total strangers assiduously pretend along with her felt oddly irritating.