CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ARHYS'S SMILE GREW FIXED AND WARY. HE REGARDED ISTA WITH startled concern, as if he feared the mad royina was having a relapse right in front of him, and, as her inadvertent host, he would be held responsible. "Madam—you jest . . . ?" An invitation to recant. A clear suggestion, Please, don't do this. . . . "My kisses are not usually so scorned!"

"I have seldom felt further from jest in my life."

He laughed uneasily. "I admit, my fevers have been a trouble to me this season, but I assure you, I am far from the grave."

"You have no fever. You don't even sweat. Your skin is the same temperature as the air. If it were not so beastly hot in this climate, more people would have noticed by now."

He continued to stare at her with the same perplexed expression.

Five gods. He really does not know. Her heart sagged.

"I think," she said carefully, "that you need to talk with your brother."

He grimaced in pain. "Would that I could. I pray for it daily. But he does not wake from his poisoned wound."

"Yes, he does. Each noon, when you have your little nap. Your only sleep of the day. Has your wife not told you this? She goes almost every day to oversee his care." And sometimes at night, as well. Although it's not exactly his care that concerns her then, I expect.

"Royina, I assure you it is not so."

" spoke with him. Come with me."

The disbelieving tilt of his mouth did not change, but when she turned and mounted the stairs again, he followed.

They entered Illvin's well-kept chamber. Goram, sitting watching his charge, saw Lord Arhys and shot to his feet, offering him his jerky, awkward bow, and a servile mutter that might have been, "M'lord."

Arhys's gaze swept down the still form in the bed. His lips thinned in disappointment. "It is all the same."

Ista said, "Lord Arhys, sit down."

"I shall stand, Royina." His frown upon her was growing less and less amused.

"Suit yourself."

The rope of white fire between the two was short and thick. Now that she knew to look for it, she could feel the demon's presence in it as well, a faint violet glow like a channel that underlay everything. It ran three ways, but only one link flowed with soul-stuff. She wrapped her hand about the bond running between the two men, squeezing it down to half its breadth. The constrained white fire backwashed into Illvin's body.

Lord Arhys's knees gave way, and he collapsed in a heap.

"Goram, help the march to a chair," Ista instructed. Hold, she silently commanded her invisible ligature, and it did.

She walked up by Illvin's bedside, studying the nodes of light. Go up, she commanded them silently, and made to push them with her hands, concentrate them at the forehead and the mouth, as Cattilara had at... that other theological point. The light pooled as she willed. Stay there. She cocked her head and studied the effect. Yes. I think.

Goram hurried to drag the chair, made of polished, interlaced curves of wood, out from the wall to Illvin's bedside. He hauled the startled-looking Arhys up by the shoulders and sat him in it. Arhys closed his mouth, rubbing at his face with a suddenly weak and shaking hand. Grown numb, was he? She ruthlessly stole Goram's stool and set it at the end of the bed, settling herself where she could best watch both brothers' faces.

Illvin's eyes opened; he took a breath and worked his jaw. Weakly, he began to push himself up on one elbow, until his gaze took in his brother, sitting at his right hand gaping at him.

"Arhys!" His voice rang with joy. His sudden smile transformed his face; Ista rocked back, blinking, at the engaging man so revealed. Goram bustled to shove pillows behind his back. He struggled up further, openmouthed with wonder. "Ah! Ah! You are alive! I did not believe them—they would never meet my eyes, I thought they lied to spare me—you are saved! I am saved. Five gods, we are all saved!" He collapsed back, wheezing and grinning, burst into shocking tears for five breaths, then regained control of his gasping.

Arhys stared like a stunned ox.

The slur was gone from Illvin's voice now, Ista noted with relief, though his lower limbs lay nearly paralyzed. She prayed that his wits would be likewise clarified. In a level tone that she was far from feeling, she asked, "Why did you believe your brother to be dead?"

"Ye gods, what was I to think? I felt that cursed knife go in—to the hilt, or I never survived a battle at some other poor bastard's expense— I could feel the push and give against my hand when it pierced the heart. I almost vomited."

Five gods, please, not fratricide. I didn't want this to be fratricide . . . She kept her voice steady despite the shaking in her belly. "How did you come to this pass? Tell me everything. Tell me from the beginning."

"She took him off to her chambers." He added to Arhys, "I was in a panic, because Cattilara had heard it from that meddling maidservant, and was determined to go up after you. I was sure she was unnatural by then—"

"Which she?" said Ista. "Princess Umerue?"

"Yes. The glittering golden girl. Arhys"—his grin returned, notably twisted—"if you would please stop falling over backward every time some aspiring seductress blows a kiss at you, it would be a great comfort to your relatives."

Arhys, his eyes crinkling with a delight that mirrored Illvin's, bent his head in a sheepish look. "I swear, I do nothing to encourage them."

"That, I'll grant, is perfectly true," Illvin assured Ista, as an aside. "Not that it's any consolation to the rest of us, watching the women flock past us without a glance in order to hang on him. Reminds me of a kitchen boy feeding his hens."

"It's not my doing. They throw themselves at me." He glanced at Ista, and added dryly, "On staircases, even."

"You could duck," suggested Illvin sweetly. "Try it sometime."

"I do, blast you. You've a highly flattering view of my ripening years if you imagine Cattilara leaves me any spare interest in dalliance, these days."

Ista wasn't quite sure how this statement squared with his actions on their first ride, but perhaps he was as charming to all rescued ladies, if only to divert them from weeping fits. With regret, Ista cut across their—obviously practiced, as well as obviously hugely relieved—banter. No doubt the god had sent her into this painful maze, baiting her with equal parts of curiosity and secret obligation, but she had no desire to linger in it. "Then why did you go to Princess Umerue's chambers? If you did."

Arhys hesitated, the levity draining from his face. He rubbed his forehead, and then his jaw and hands. "I don't quite know. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Illvin said, "Cattilara would have it that the princess had slipped you a love potion, and you were not in control of yourself. For all my impatience with her fancies, I ... hoped that it might be so. Because the alternative was much worse."

"What, that I'd fallen in love with Umerue?"

"No. That wasn't what I was thinking."

Ista's gaze upon him sharpened. "What were you thinking?"

Illvin's face grew introspective, grave. "Because she'd had the same effect on me. At first. Then she saw Arhys and forgot me. Dropped me to earth like a sack of bran. And . . . my wits came back to me. I finally remembered where I'd seen her before, except that it wasn't quite her—Arhys, do you recall my little trip down to Jokona about three years ago, when I went disguised as a horse dealer? The time I brought back Goram and the ground plan of Castle Hamavik."

"Yes ..."

"I bought some stock from the lord of Hamavik. Paid too much, which made him happy and loquacious and inclined to take me for a fool. He treated me to dinner at his seaside villa, by which I might have guessed how much he'd skinned me if I hadn't known already. He showed off all his best possessions to me, including, briefly, his wife. A princess of Jokona, granddaughter of the Golden General himself, he told me, as if she were a pretty bit of blood stock he'd done a sharp trade for. Which I gather he must have, for the Regent Dowager Joen is not reputed to spend her children cheaply. Five gods, but he was a repulsive old goat. Golden she was, but she was the saddest silent mouse of a woman I'd ever seen. Drab. Fearful. And she didn't speak more than six words of lbran."

"Not the same princess, then," said Arhys. "The prince of Jokona has a pack of sisters. You mistook one for another, perhaps. Umerue's tongue was bold and witty."

"Yes. She made bilingual puns. Yet unless she has a twin sister of the same name, I'd swear her for the same woman." Illvin sighed, then his brow wrinkled. "Catti went ripping up to the princess's chambers in a fury, and I went charging after her. I was afraid of—I knew not what, but I thought, if nothing else, I might somehow warn you, and prevent a scene."

"My faithful flank man."

"This went beyond the bounds of duty, I thought. You were going to owe me, and I meant to collect, too. I begged Catti to at least let me go in first, but she ducked under my elbow. Our tumbling entry could not have been more ill timed. Speaking of bold tongues."

Dead men, Ista noted, couldn't blush. But they could at least look shamefaced.

"Even I couldn't blame Catti for going into a frenzy," Illvin continued. "But if that over decorated dagger had been sitting at the bottom of that pile of gear instead of atop it, I might have grabbed her quicker. She went straight for the princess, screaming. Wanted to cut her face off. For understandable reasons."

"I remember that part," said Arhys slowly, as if unsure. "It comes back ..."

"You pushed the golden slut out of the way, I seized Catti's knife hand, and between us we might have saved the moment if you hadn't tripped, lunging out of bed. Were you in such a whirl of lust that you couldn't wait to undress? If I'd had such an opportunity—never mind. But the best swordsman in Caribastos, hobbled by his own trousers— five gods, Arhys! Catti wouldn't have had the strength to drive that big blade home if she had been trying for you, if you hadn't toppled into us with your ankles twisted up." His indignation faded, and his excited voice slowed. "I felt the blade go in. I was sure we'd done you, among us all."

"It wasn't Catti's fault!" Arhys said hastily. "Oh, the look of woe upon her face—it was like being stabbed again. No wonder she . . . After that. . . after that, I don't remember."

"You fell at my feet. The fool girl yanked the blade back out of you—I shouted, No, Catti! Too late. Though I'm not sure if leaving it in would have staunched anything, the way you spurted. I was trying to get one hand pressed to your wound and hang on to Catti's sleeve with the other, but she twisted right out of her over robe. Umerue was shrieking, climbing back over the bed to try to get to you—I wasn't sure why. Catti plunged the knife straight into her stomach. Umerue grabbed the hilt,

then looked up and gave me the saddest look. And said Oh, in this lost little voice. Like . . . like her voice when first I ever saw her." His voice faded further. "She just said Oh. Catti's face took on a very strange air, and after that... I don't remember." He sank back on his pillows. "Why can't I . . . ?"

Ista's hands were trembling. She hid them in her skirt. "What do you remember next after that, Lord Illvin?" she asked.

"Waking up here. With my head buzzing. Dizzy and sick. And then waking up here again. And again. And again. And again. And—something must have happened to me. Was I hit from behind?"

"Cattilara said Pechma stabbed you," said Arhys. He cleared his throat. "And Umerue."

"But he wasn't there. Did he come in after us? And besides, I am not"—Illvin's hand went to his chest, beneath the sober linen, and came away smeared carmine—"ow! . . . stabbed?"

"What was Pechma like?" asked Ista, doggedly.

"He was Umerue's clerk," said Arhys. "He had a disastrous taste in clothing, and was the butt of her retinue's jokes—there's always one such feckless fellow. When Cattilara told me he had attacked Illvin, I said it was impossible. She said it had better be possible, or we'd have a war with Prince Sordso before the body was carted home. And that no one among the Jokonans would stand up for Pechma. And indeed, she proved right about that. She also said to be patient, that Illvin would recover. I was beginning to doubt, but now I see it is so!"

Ista said, "You've eaten no food for over two months, yet you didn't wonder!"

Illvin glanced up from his smeared hand to stare at Arhys, startled, his eyes narrowing.

"I ate. I just couldn't keep it all down." Arhys shrugged. "I seem to get enough."

"But he's going to be all right now," said Illvin slowly. "Isn't he?"

Ista hesitated. "No. He's not."

Her gaze traveled to the silent auditor of all this, half crouched by the far wall. "Goram. What did you think of Princess Umerue?"

The noise he made in his throat sounded like a dog growling. "She was bad, that one."

"How could you tell?"

His face wrinkled. "When she looked at me, I was cold afraid. I stayed out of her sight."

Ista considered his ravaged soul-stuff. I imagine you would.

"I would like to think that Goram helped bring me back to my senses," said Illvin ruefully, "but I'm afraid that was just the effect of Umerue's inattention."

Ista studied Goram briefly. His soul-scars were a distraction in this reckoning, she decided; they were an old injury, old and dark. If, as she was beginning to suspect, he'd once been demon-gnawed, it was well before this time. Which left. . .

"Umerue was a sorceress," Ista stated.

A brief, fierce grin flashed across Illvin's face. "I guessed it!" He hesitated. "How do you know?" And after another moment, "Who are you?"

I have seen her lost demon, Ista decided not to say just yet. She desperately wished dy Cabon were here now, with the theological training to unravel this tangle. Illvin was staring at her more warily of a sudden, worried—but not, she thought, disbelieving.

"They say you were seminary-trained in your youth, Lord Illvin. You can't have forgotten it all. I was told by a learned divine of the Bastard's own order that if a demon's mount dies, and the departing soul has not the strength left to drag it back to the gods, it jumps to another. The sorceress died, and the demon is in neither of you, I assure you. Who's left?"

Arhys was looking sick. For a walking corpse, this ought to have been an improvement, Ista thought, but it wasn't. "Catti has it," he whispered.

He wasn't arguing with her about this one, she noticed. Ista nodded approval, feeling absurdly like some tutor commending a pupil for getting his sums right. "Yes. Catti has it now. And her bidding is for it to keep you alive. Well, animate. In as far as its powers may be forced to work that way."

Arhys's mouth opened, closed. He said at last, "But. . . those things are dangerous! They consume people alive—sorcerers lose their souls to them. Catti, she must be treated—I must summon the Temple theologians, to cast it out of her—"

"Hold a moment, Arhys," said Illvin, sounding strained. "I think we need to think this through ..."

A thumping sounded on the gallery outside: running feet. Two pairs. The door was yanked open. Cattilara, barefoot, in disarrayed riding dress, her hair wind-wild, tumbled through gasping. Liss followed, nearly as out of breath.

"Arhys!" Cattilara cried, and flung herself upon him. "Five gods, five gods! What has that woman done to you?"

"Sorry, Royina," Liss muttered to Ista's ear. "We were in the middle of this field when she suddenly cried that there was something wrong with her lord, ran for her horse, and galloped off. There was no diverting her with anything short of a crossbow bolt."

"Sh. It's all right." Ista quelled a twinge of nausea at her trick on Catti, effective though it had been. "Well—sufficient. Wait by Goram, but do not speak or interrupt. No matter how strange what you hear may sound."

Liss dipped dutifully and went to lean on the wall by the groom, who nodded welcome. She cocked her head dubiously at Lady Cattilara, sobbing in Lord Arhys's enfeebled grip.

Cattilara grasped his hand in turn, tested its weakness, and turned her tear-stained face up to her husband's. "What has she done to you?" she demanded.

"What have you done to me, Catti?" he asked gently in turn. He glanced at his brother. "To both of us?"

Cattilara looked around, glaring at Ista and at Illvin. "You tricked me! Arhys, whatever they say, they He!"

Illvin's brows went up. "Now, there's a comprehensive indictment," he murmured.

Ista tried to ignore the distracting surfaces for a moment. The demon was as tightly closed as Ista had yet seen it, dense and shiny, as if, all other routes blocked, it was trying to flee inside itself. It seemed to tremble.

As if in terror? Why? What does it think I can do to it? More: What does it know that I don't? Ista frowned in mystification.

"Catti." Arhys stroked her wild hair, patting it smooth, absorbing her sobs on his shoulder. "It's time to tell the truth. Sh, now. Look at me." He took her chin, turned it to his face, smiled into her wet eyes with a look that would have made Ista's heart, she thought, melt and run down into her shoes. It had an even less useful effect on the hysterical Catti. She slithered out of his weak grip and crouched at his feet, weeping on his knees like a lost child, her only clear words a repeated, No, no!

Illvin rolled his eyes ceiling ward, and rubbed at his forehead in exasperation with an equally weak swipe. He looked as though he would gladly trade what was left of his soul at this moment for escape from the room. He glanced up to meet Ista's commiserating gaze; she held up two fingers, Wait. . .

"Yes, yes," Arhys murmured to his wife. His hand, on her head, gave it a soft little shake from side to side. "I command all here at Porifors; all its lives are in my hands. I have to know all. Yes."

"Good, Arhys," muttered Illvin. "Stand up to her, for once."

Ista pressed her hand to her mouth, for Arhys was speaking. Yes, better that this should come from him. She will not resist him, or at least, not as much.

"What happened after you stabbed the ... sorceress?" Arhys asked. "How did you capture her demon?"

Catti sniffled, swallowed, choked, and coughed. In a rough voice she answered, "It just came to me. I didn't do anything. It was either me or Illvin, and it was more afraid of Illvin." A grim little smile fleeted across her face. "It promised me anything if I would flee away. But there was only one thing I wanted. I wanted you back. I made it put you back. It still wants to escape, but I'll never let it, never."

Will against will. The demon, Ista suspected, was experienced, strong with the consumption of more than one life. But on certain narrow issues, Cattilara was more willful. More than willful: obsessed. If the demon had mistaken Catti for a more tractable mount than Illvin, it had been in for an interesting surprise. For all her exasperation with Catti, Ista felt a certain dark satisfaction at the thought of the demon's dismay.

"You do realize," Ista said, "that the demon is stealing life from Illvin to keep Arhys . . . moving?"

Catti's head jerked up. "It's only fair. He stabbed Arhys; let him pay!"

"Hold hard!" said Illvin. "It wasn't just me in that botch-up."

"If you hadn't grabbed my hand, it wouldn't have happened!"

"No, nor if Arhys hadn't tripped, or if Umerue had dodged the other way, or, or any of a hundred other things. But we all did. And it did." His mouth set in a flat line.

"Yes," said Ista slowly. "Four persons combined to effect an outcome desired, I daresay, by none. I am not so sure about the . . . fifth party present."

"It's true," said Illvin, "that demons thrive on misfortune and disorder; it is their nature, and the magic they lend partakes of that nature. Or so the divines always taught me." He turned against his pillows and studied his sister-in-law uneasily.

"Well, this demon was sent here," said Cattilara. "On purpose. It was supposed to seduce Illvin, or Arhys, or both, and take Castle Porifors from within for the prince of Jokona. I stopped that from happening. As much as any soldier pushing back a scaling ladder in a siege." She tossed her hair and glowered, as if daring anyone to criticize this achievement.

Illvin's lips pursed in a look of sudden enlightenment. Arhys's brows drew down in dismay.

"And Lord Pechma?" prompted Ista.

"Oh, Pechma was easy. The demon knew all about him." Cattilara sniffed disdain. "All I had to do, after I'd arranged Illvin and walked Arhys back to our bed, was find Pechma and accuse him, and convince him he would be hanged out of hand in the morning if he didn't run away. He did the rest himself. He's probably still running."

The young woman had spent a busy night, Ista reflected. The artistic malice of Illvin's naked arrangement took her aback. A little revenge, perhaps, upon a man who'd remained steadfastly undazzled by his brother's choice of bride?

"So none of this is Arhys's fault," Catti continued passionately. "Why should he be the only one to suffer?" She turned her angry face to Ista. "So, you—whatever you have done to bind him to this chair—you let him up!"

Ista touched her lips. "Very many people suffer, who are not at fault," she said. "It's not a new condition in the world. I will—as you say, release—Arhys in a while, but all must speak freely first. The Temple tells us that demons work their wonders at a terrible cost. Just how long do you imagine you can keep this one going?"

Cattilara's jaw set. "I don't know. As long as I breathe and have will! Because if the demon magic stops, Arhys dies."

"If . . . that is indeed the alternative," Illvin put in suddenly, "perhaps this turn and turnabout is no bad thing. I can stand to share . . . half, say. Suppose half of each day should be Arhys's, and half mine?"

And then he need not be a fratricide? Or even one-quarter of a fratricide? The rising hope was writ plain in his face. Cattilara brightened at the unexpected offer of alliance, and she looked up at Illvin with new speculation.

Ista hesitated, shaken in her certainties. Uncertainties, her bleak thought corrected. "I think," she said, "this cannot work, or cannot work for very long. However starved it is, the demon must be slowly consuming Catti, or it should have faded by now, or been unable to maintain its spell. Learned dy Cabon told me that the demon always turns the tables on its mount, given enough time."

"So Arhys is saved, I will take the risk!" said Cattilara.

Arhys drew a sharp breath of protest and shook his head.

"Seems almost worthwhile to me," muttered Illvin darkly.

"But it's not a risk. It's a certainty. And Arhys dies the same, and Cattilara is destroyed."

"But when, how long, that's the question!" Cattilara argued. "All sorts of other things could happen before . . . then."

"Yes, and I can tell you some of them," said Ista. "Illvin, I am sure, studied the theology of death magic in the Bastard's seminary. I had a closer acquaintance with it, once. Arhys isn't alive now. The demon captured his severed spirit and returned it to haunt his own body. A familiar, congenial abode, I suspect, in some ways. But he is cut off from the support of his god, and his spirit is equally torn from the nourishment of matter. He cannot maintain life, except by what is plundered from Illvin, nor increase it, nor engender it."

Cattilara flinched, hunching her shoulders in protest.

Ista felt her way further into the dark consequences. "So his fate must be the fate of the lost spirits. Slowly to fade, to blur, to grow unmindful of himself, the world, his memories—his loves and hates—to forget. It is a sort of senility. I have seen the blind ghosts drifting. It is a quiet damnation, and merciful—for them. Less merciful for a man still in his body, I think."

"You mean he'll lose his wits!" said Illvin, aghast.

"That's . . . not so good," said Arhys. "I have not so many to spare as you." He attempted to smile at his brother. The attempt failed miserably.

Ista bit her lip and forged on. "I have a guess why the demon gives Illvin so little time, barely enough—no, not even enough—to eat. Why their shares are so very uneven. I think, when Illvin is awake, the demon . . . loses ground, maintaining Arhys's body. For every hour of waking life given to Illvin, the dead body decays a little more. In time, the rot shall start to be evident to the senses of others." It was evident to her heightened sensitivity already, now that she knew how to look. I do not love my new education. "Is that the fate you desire for your handsome husband, Lady Cattilara? A senile mind trapped in a decomposing body?"

Cattilara's lips moved, No, no, but she did not speak. She hid her face against Arhys's knees.

Gods, why did you give this vile task to me? Ista spoke on, relentlessly. "Illvin is dying too, being slowly drained of more life than he can replace. But if Illvin dies, Arhys will . . . stop, as well. Both their mother's sons lost together. Not her wish, I can assure you. Which end will come first in this evil race, I cannot guess. But that is the ultimate arithmetic of demon magic: two lives traded for one, then that one subtracted. Leaving, for all your pains, nothing. Do I have my tally theologically correct, Lord Illvin?"

"Yes," he whispered. He swallowed and found his voice. "Demon magic—the divines say—invariably engenders more chaos than it ever produces order. The cost is always higher than the prize. Some who dabble in demons try to spread the cost to others and keep the prize for themselves. It seldom works for long. Although it is said that some very wise and subtle theologians, Temple sorcerers, can use the demon magic according to its nature, and not against it, and yet effect good. I never quite understood that part."

Ista was very unsure about her next move, but it seemed the logical progression. She had a profound mistrust of logic; it was quite as possible to reason one's way, step by slow step, into a mire of deep sin as it was to fall into it headlong. "I have now heard depositions from all concerned here except one. I think this demon has acquired the gift of speech. One wonders from whom, if it can make ... bilingual puns, but anyway. I would speak with it. Lady Cattilara, can you let it come up for a time?"

"No!" She frowned at Ista's look, and added, "It's not me that's the problem. It tries to get away. It will try to run off with my body, if it can."

"Hm," said Ista. She didn't greatly trust Cattilara, but this assertion could well be true.

"Tie her to the chair," Liss suggested laconically from her place by the wall. Ista looked over her shoulder at the girl; Liss raised her eyebrows and shrugged. She kept a detached posture, but her eyes were wide and fascinated, as if she were watching a play and wanted to hear the next act.

"You don't understand," said Cattilara. "It won't want to go back in, afterward."

"I will undertake to hold it," said Ista.

Illvin frowned curiously at her. "How?"

"I don't think you can," said Cattilara.

"It does. Or it would not fear me so, I think."

"Oh." Cattilara's face screwed up in thought.

"I think," said Arhys slowly, "this prisoner's interrogation could be a most important one. It touches on the defense of Porifors. Will you dare it, dear Catti—for me?"

She sniffed, frowned, set her teeth.

"I know you have the courage," he added, watching her.

"Oh—very well!" She made a face and climbed to her feet. "But I don't think this is going to work."

The young marchess watched with dismay as Goram, with Liss's assistance, dragged the half-paralyzed Arhys out of the chair to sit on the floor propped up against the side of the bed. Cattilara cooperated, though, plopping down in his vacated spot and laying her hands out on the wooden arms. Goram hastened to produce makeshift ties from Illvin's stock of belts and sashes.

"Use the cloths," Arhys advised anxiously. "So they will not cut into her skin."

Ista glanced at the scabs circling her own wrists like bracelets.

"Tie my ankles, too," Cattilara insisted. "Tighter."

Goram was overcautious, under the march's worried eye, but Liss finally achieved knots that Cattilara approved. The ties seemed more bundles than bindings by the time Liss finished.

Ista moved her stool over to face Cattilara, very conscious of Arhys's strong, limp body laid out by her skirts. "Go ahead, then, Lady Cattilara. Release the demon, let it up."

Cattilara's eyes closed. Ista half closed hers, trying to see those inner boundaries with her inner eye. It was not so much a case of letting, it seemed, as driving. "Come out, you," Cattilara muttered, sounding like a boy poking a badger out of its hole with a stick. "Up!"

A surge of invisible violet light—Ista summoned all her sensitivity. On the surface, Cattilara's expression changed, the stiff anxiety giving way, briefly, to a languid smile; her tongue ran over her lips, lasciviously. She grimaced, as if stretching the muscles of her face in unaccustomed directions. The violet tinge flowed throughout her body, to the fingertips. Her breath drew in.

Her eyes snapped open, widening in terror at the sight of Ista. "Spare us, Shining One!" she shrieked. Everyone in the room flinched at the sharp cry.

She began to rock and yank at her bindings. "Let us up, untie us! We command you! Let us go, let us go!"

She stopped, and hung panting, then a sly look flashed in her face. She sank back, closed her eyes, opened them again, returning to that stiff, blinking anxiety. "As you see, it's useless. The stupid thing won't come out, even for me. Let me up."

The violet tint, Ista noted, still filled Cattilara's body from edge to edge. She waved back Liss, who had started forward with a disappointed look on her face. "No, the creature lies. It's still right there."

"Oh." Liss returned to the wall.

Cattilara's face changed again, dissolving into rage. "Let us go! You blockheads, you have no idea what you have brought down on Porifors!" She bucked and jerked with terrifying strength, rocking the chair. "Flee, flee! We must flee! All flee! Go while you can. She is coming. She is coming. Let us go, let us go—" Cattilara's voice rose and broke in a wordless scream. The chair began to topple: Goram caught it and held it as it thumped and scraped.

The frenzied struggles did not diminish, though Cattilara grew scarlet with the effort, and her breath pumped in frightening rasps. Was the demon desperate enough to seek its escape through Cattilara's death, if it could arrange it? Yes, Ista decided. She could well picture it breaking its mount's neck by running madly against a wall, or flinging her headfirst over a balcony. Threatening pain to Cattilara's body was obviously useless, even if Arhys would . . . well, he'd have no choice but to sit still for it. But it was clearly a futile tactic.

"Very well." Ista sighed. "Come back up, Lady Cattilara."

The violet tide seemed to slosh back and forth within the confines of Cattilara's spasming body. The tint receded, but then flooded back. Cattilara unable to regain control? Ista hadn't expected this. Oh, no. And I promised her I would hold it. . .

"Stay," said Ista. "I was sent by the god to cut this knot. Release Arhys, and I will release you." Would it believe her? More important, would the threat jolt Catti into ascendancy again?

The demon-Catti froze in its fight, staring through wide eyes. The soul-stuff in the conduit gushed back toward Illvin. Abruptly, the horrified expression drained from Arhys's face, to be replaced with—nothing at all. A slack, pale stillness. He toppled over on his side like a rag doll falling. Like a corpse collapsing. Porifors's brilliant champion turned to a carcass, a mass of dubious meat it would take two men to drag away.

But his spirit was not uprooted in the white fire Ista had seen in the dying before. His ghost merely drifted apart, shifting from the locus of his body but scarcely otherwise changed. A shock of horror raced through Ista. Five gods. He is sundered already. His god cannot reach him. What have I done?

"Mmmmmm PUT HIM BACK!" Cattilara raged up to full control of her body like an unleashed mastiff taking down a bull by its nose. The violet light snapped closed into a tight, defensive ball, the channels reappeared, the fire flowed again. Arhys's breath drew in with a jerk; he blinked and opened his jaw to stretch his face, and pushed himself back into a sitting position, looking half stunned.

Ista sat shaken. The ploy had worked on Cattilara as her impulse had guessed, but had revealed . . . something she scarcely understood. No more ploys. I have not the stomach for them.

Cattilara hung wheezing in her bindings, staring malignantly at Ista. "You. You horrid old bitch. You tricked me."

"I tricked the demon, too. Are you sorry?" She signed to Goram and Liss, and they began cautiously unwinding the marchess's restraints.

Illvin, who had been peeking worriedly over the side of his bed at his brother, leaned back again and stared in disquiet at Ista. "How are you doing this, lady? Are you perchance a sorceress, too? Are we to trade one demon enemy for a stronger one?"

"No," said Ista. "My unwelcome gifts stem from another source. Ask Catti's ... pet. It knows." Better than I do, I suspect. If possession of or by a demon made one a sorcerer, and the hosting of a god made one a saint, what ambiguous hybrid did one become in the hands of the demon-god?

"God-touched, then—you claim?" he asked. Neither believing nor disbelieving yet, but watchful.

"To my everlasting sorrow."

"How came this about?"

"Some suffering bastard prayed to a god too busy to attend to him, and He delegated the task to me. Or so He feigned."

Illvin sank down in his sheets. "Oh," he said very quietly, as her meaning sank in. After a moment, he added, "I would speak more with you on this. In some, um, less busy hour."

"I'll see what I may do."

Arhys moved his nearly nerveless hand to caress his wife's ankle. "Catti. This can't go on."

"But love, what shall we do?" She rocked her head to favor Ista with a heartbroken glare. "You cannot take him now. It's too soon. I will not give him up now." She rubbed at the red marks on her arms as her ties fell away.

"He's already had more time than is given to many men," Ista chided her. "He accepted the risks of his soldier's calling long ago; when you bound yourself to him in marriage, you accepted them, too."

But what of his sundering? Death of the body was grief enough. The slow decay of the ghosts, souls who had refused the gods, was a self-destruction. But Arhys had not chosen this exile; it had been imposed upon him. Not his soul's suicide, but its murder . . .

Ista temporized. "But no, it need not be today, in hasty disarray. There is a little time yet. Enough to put his affairs in order while he can still command his wits, if he does not tarry, enough to write or speak his farewells. Not much more than that, I think." She considered Illvin's dangerously emaciated fragility. This tangle is far worse than I first guessed. And even second sight does not yet see a way out.

Arhys shoved himself upright. "You speak sense, madam. I should call the temple's notary to me—review my will—"

"It's not fair!" Cattilara lashed out again. "Illvin slew you, and now he'll gain all your possessions!"

Illvin's head jerked back. "I am not destitute. I do not desire the dy Lutez properties. To avoid that taint, I would gladly give up any expectations. Will them to my niece, or to the Temple—or to her, even." A twist of his lips indicated his brother's wife. He hesitated. "Except for Porifors."

Arhys smiled, staring down at his boots. "Good boy. We do not yield Porifors. Hold to that, and you shall serve me still, even when my grave has swallowed all vows."

Cattilara burst into tears.

Ista levered her exhausted body upright from her stool. She felt as though she had been beaten with sticks. "Lord Illvin, your brother must borrow of you for a little longer. Are you ready?"

"Eh," he grunted, without enthusiasm. "Do what you must." He glanced up at her and added with suppressed urgency, "You will come again, yes?"

"Yes." She moved her hand, released her ligature.

Illvin sank back. Arhys rolled to his feet, a picture of strength again. "Ah!"

He enfolded the weeping Cattilara in his arms and led her out, murmuring comforting endearments.

Yes, Ista thought bitterly. You caught her—I'll bet you didn't even try to dodge—you deal with her . . . And he would, she felt sure. What less would one expect from a man with soap in his saddlebags . . . ? Her temples were throbbing.

"Liss, I'm going to go lie down now. I have a headache."

"Oh." Liss came promptly to her side, offering her arm in support. As a lady-in-waiting she had her limits, but Ista had to allow, she was one of the best courtiers she'd ever encountered. "Would you like me to bathe your forehead in lavender water? I saw a lady do that, once."

"Thank you. That would be lovely."

She glanced back at Lord Illvin, lying silently, emptied of life and wit again. "Take care of him, Goram."

He bobbed a bow, gave her a look of inarticulate frustration, and abruptly dropped to his knees and kissed the hem of her skirt. "Bles't One," he mumbled. "Free him. Free us all."

Ista swallowed aggravation, produced an unfelt smile for him, extracted her skirt from his grip, and let Liss usher her out.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A PALL WAS CAST OVER PORIFORS THAT EVENING. THE CASTLE'S master and mistress withdrew into private conclave, and all the planned entertainments were abruptly canceled. Ista could only be relieved to be left in her chambers. Toward sunset, Liss reported, a few of Arhys's key officers were called to him, and exited much later looking very grim. Ista hoped the march had mustered the wit to leave the original story of Umerue's death intact and devise some other tale to cover his impending—or was that retroactive?—lethal illness. But given that the truth implicated the marchess for the Jokonan princess's murder, Ista couldn't picture Cattilara rushing to, nor Arhys permitting, public confession.

Ista's dreams were untroubled that night by gods or visions, although made unpleasant enough by murky, erratic nightmares involving either disastrous travel on broken-down or dying horses, or confused wandering through crumbling, architecturally bizarre castles for the repair of which she was somehow responsible. She woke poorly rested, and waited impatiently for noon.

She sent Liss to help Goram and warn him of her visit, then watched for the meal tray to be brought up. It was handed in at Lord Illvin's door by the maid; shortly afterward Liss emerged and strolled across the gallery to Ista's chambers.

"Goram will signal by opening the door when he's ready," Liss reported. She was subdued, still unsettled by yesterday's evil wonders and increasingly worried for Foix, for all that Ista had assured her that he must be in the hands of the archdivine of Maradi by now. Liss had been more consoled by Ista's pointing out that Lady Cattilara had hosted a more powerful demon than Foix's for over two months without visible deterioration. Ista only wished her own heart could share in the reassurance she ladled out.

At last the carved door on the gallery opposite swung open, and Liss escorted Ista across.

Illvin was sitting up in bed, dressed in tunic and trousers, hair brushed back and tied at his nape.

"Royina," he said, and bowed his head. He looked both wary and shocked. Goram or Liss or both had presumably finally informed him of Ista's rank and identity, in the little time since he had returned to consciousness. "I'm sorry. I swear I prayed for help, not for you!"

His speech was slurred again. Ista was reminded that while she'd had a day to digest the developments, Illvin had only been granted an hour. She sighed, went to his bedside, and stole the white fire from the lower half of his body to reinforce the upper. He blinked and gulped.

"It's not that—I didn't mean to insult ..." His words trailed off in embarrassed confusion, not slurred now, just mumbled. He attempted to shift his legs, failed, and eyed them with misgiving.

"I suspect," she said, "that royina is not the capacity in which I was called here. The gods do not measure rank as we do. A royina and a chambermaid likely look much the same, from their perspective."

"You must admit, though, chambermaids are more numerous."

She smiled bleakly. "I seem to have a calling. It is not by my choice. The gods appear attracted to me. Like flies to blood."

He waved one weakened hand in protest at this metaphor. "I confess, I have never thought of the gods as flies."

"Neither have I, really." She remembered staring into those dark infinities. "But dwelling on their real nature hurts my . . . reason, I suppose. Saps my nerve."

"Perhaps the gods know what they are about. How did you know what I dreamed? I saw you three times, when I waked in my dreaming. Twice, you shone with an uncanny light."

"I dreamed those dreams, too."

"Even the third one?"

"Yes." No dream, that, but she was abashed by that rash kiss. Though after Cattilara's performance, it had seemed such a small self-indulgence . . .

He cleared his throat. "My apologies, Royina."

"What for?"

"Ah . . ." He glanced at her lips, and away. "Nothing."

She tried not to think about the taste of his reviving mouth. Goram dragged the somewhat battered chair to Illvin's bedside for her, and put out the stool at the bed's foot for Liss, before retreating to stand at a hunched sort of attention by the far wall. Ista and Illvin were left staring at one another in equal, she was sure, bafflement.

"Supposing," he began again, "that you are not here by chance, but by the prayers of, well"—he cleared his throat in embarrassment— "someone—it must be to solve this tangle. Yes?"

"Say rather, uncover it. Its solution eludes me."

"I thought you had agency over Catti's demon. Will you not banish it?"

"I don't know how," she admitted uneasily. "The Bastard has given me my second sight—given me back, I should say, my second sight, for this is not the first time the gods have troubled me. But the god gave me no instructions, unless they are contained in another man I saw in my dreams." And vice versa. Upon consideration ... was dy Cabon's appearance, on the heels of the Bastard's mysterious second kiss, some sort of intimation of just that? "The god sent me a spiritual conductor, Learned dy Cabon, and I dearly desire his counsel in this before I proceed. He has studied something, I believe, about how demons are properly dispatched back to their Master. I'm certain he is meant to be here.

But I have lost him on the road, and I fear for his safety." She hesitated. "I'm not in haste in this matter. I see no merit in releasing Arhys from his body only to doom him to the damnation of a lost ghost."

He grew still. "A ghost? Are you sure?"

"I saw it, when the spell was interrupted here yesterday. Nothing . .. happened, and it should have. There is a white roaring, when the doors of a soul are opened by death to the gods; it is a huge event. Damnation is but a silence, a slow freezing." She rubbed her tired eyes. "And more—even if I knew how he might find his way to his god, I am by no means sure that Arhys can convince his wife to release him. Yet if he does not persuade her, who else could? Not me, I fear. And even if she would let him go ... the demon she has contracted seems skilled and powerful. If she no longer is sustained by the overmastering will to keep Arhys seeming-alive, if she collapses into grief—she will be very vulnerable to it."

He vented a "Hm" of deepening doubt.

"Has she much strength of character, in your observation?"

He frowned. "I would not have said so, before this. Lovely girl, adores Arhys, but I'd swear that if she held up a lighted candle beside one pretty ear, I could blow it out through the other. Arhys doesn't seem to mind." He smiled wryly. "Although if such beauty had worshipped me so ardently, my opinion of her wits might well have risen higher upon the swelling of my head, or whatever, too. Yet—she resisted the cloud of Umerue's sorcery, and I ... did not."

"I suspect Umerue underestimated her. And that's another thing," said Ista. "How could a princess of Jokona, a devout Quadrene, come by a demon in the first place? And keep it concealed, or otherwise evade accusation? They burn sorcerers there, though how the Quadrene divines keep the demon from jumping to another through the flames, I don't know. They must do something to tie it to its mount before dispatching them both."

"Yes, they do. It involves much ceremony and prayer. An ugly business; worse, it doesn't always work." He hesitated. "Catti said the sorceress was sent."

"By whom? The prince her brother? Assuming she had been dumped back into his household by her last late husband's heirs."

"I believe she was, yes. But . . . it's hard to picture Sordso the Sot dabbling in demons for the sake of Jokona."

"Sordso the Sot? Is that what the men of Caribastos call the young prince?"

"That's what everybody calls him, on both sides of the border. He chose to spend the hiatus between his father's death and the end of his mother's regency not in studying statecraft or warfare, but in wine parties and versifying. He's actually quite a pretty poet, in a self-consciously melancholy sort of vein, judging by the samples I've heard. We all hoped he would pursue the calling, which looked to be more rewarding for him than a prince's trade." He grinned briefly. "My lord dy Caribastos would be glad to give him a pension and a palace, and take the burdens of government off his narrow shoulders."

"It seems the prince is not so inattentive now. It was he who sent the raiding party into Ibra, which fled east from Rauma over the mountains and so encountered me. They had tally officers to account the prince's fifth. Did Liss tell you of this?"

"Only in brief." He nodded to the riding girl, who nodded back in confirmation. He paused, his dark brows drawing down. "Rauma? Strange. Why Rauma?"

"I guessed that it was to encourage the Fox of Ibra to keep his troops at home, come the fall campaign, instead of sending them in support of his son against Visping."

"Mm, could be. Rauma just seems very deep in Ibran territory to strike at so. Bad lines of retreat, as the raiders apparently found."

"Lord Arhys mentioned that by his reckoning, of the three hundred men who left Jokona, only three returned."

Illvin whistled. "Good for Arhys. Costly diversion for Sordso!"

"Except that they came very close to paying for all by carrying me off with them. But that could not have been part of their original plan. They didn't even carry maps of Chalion."

"I know the march of Rauma of old. I can imagine he would give the Jokonans a hot welcome. He used to be one of our better enemies, till we all became in-laws with Ibra. Your daughter's marriage took a great deal of pressure off Porifors's western flank, for which I do thank her, Royina."

"Royse Bergon is a dear boy." Not that Ista could help approving of anyone so plainly smitten with her daughter as Iselle's young Ibran husband.

"His father the roya is a bit of a cactus, though. Dry, spiny, will make your fingers bleed."

"Well, he's our cactus now."

"Indeed."

Ista sat back with a troubled sigh. "The news of this—at least, the news that a highborn lady of Jokona's court harbored a demon and attempted to suborn a Chalionese fortress by sorcery—should not be suppressed. I should write a warning to Archdivine Mendenal at Cardegoss, and to Chancellor dy Cazaril, at least."

"That would be well," he conceded reluctantly, "for all that I am gravely embarrassed by how closely Umerue came to succeeding. And yet—it wasn't the archdivine of Cardegoss who was dragged by chance and his hair here to the hind end of Chalion. It was you. A more unlikely answer to my prayers I can scarcely imagine." His mouth twisted up in puzzlement as he squinted at her.

"Did you pray to the Bastard, in your coherent moments?"

"Say, waking, rather than coherent. It all seems a fog till—yesterday? Yesterday just now. Yes, I prayed desperately. It was the only course left to me by then. I couldn't even form the right words aloud. Just howling in my heart. To my god, whom I had abandoned—I haven't been much for prayer since I became a man. If He'd said, Boot off, boy, you wanted to be on your own, now eat what you cooked, I should have thought Him within His rights." He added more slowly, "Why you? Unless this tangle has some older roots still, with my brother's father and Cardegoss court politics."

His shrewd guess discomfited her. "I have an old, dry knot of guilt still left to be undone with the late Lord dy Lutez, yes, but it has nothing to do with Arhys. And no, Arvol was not my lover!"

Illvin looked taken aback at her vehemence. "I did not say so, lady!"

She let out her breath. "No, you didn't. It's Lady Cattilara who thinks the old slander is a romantic tale, five gods spare me. Arhys just wants to take me for some spiritual stepmother, I think."

He surprised her by snorting. "He would." His fondly exasperated headshake scarcely enlightened her as to how to interpret this cryptic remark.

She said a little tartly, "Until I heard you two speaking with each other, I had half decided you were the jealous murderer. The despised bastard brother, denied father, title, property, pushed over the edge by this last loss."

His dry half laugh did not sound in the least offended. "I have encountered that delusion once or twice before. The truth is exactly the reverse. I had a father all my life, or at any rate, all of his. Arhys had—a dream. My father undertook the raising of us both, in all practical matters, and he tried to do well by Arhys, but it was always with that little extra mindful effort. To me, his love flowed without hindrance.

"But Arhys was never jealous or resentful because, you see, someday it would all be made right. Someday, his fine father would call him to court. When he was big enough. When he was good enough, a good enough swordsman, horseman, officer. The great Lord dy Lutez would place him at his right hand, present him to his glittering retinue, and say to all his powerful friends, See, this is my son, is he not well? Arhys would never wear his best things; he kept them packed for the journey.

For when the call came. He was ready to leave on an hour's notice. Then Lord dy Lutez died, and . . . the dream stayed a dream."

Ista shook her head in sorrow. "In all the five years I knew him, Arvol dy Lutez scarcely mentioned Arhys. He never spoke of you. If he had not died in the dungeons of the Zangre that night . . . that summons still might never have come, I think."

"I wondered, in retrospect. I pray you, don't tell Arhys that."

"I am not sure yet what I must tell him." Although I have my fears. Whatever it was, it was clear she had best not put it off too long.

"Me, I had a live man for a father," Illvin went on. "Cranky betimes—how we fought when I was younger! I am so glad he lived long enough for us to be grown men together. We cared for him here at Porifors after his palsy-stroke—albeit not too long. I think he wished to be gone to look for our mother by then, for a few times we found him out searching for her." His rich voice tightened. "Twenty years dead, she was. His life was so lightly held at the last, his death in the Father's season seemed no sorrow. I held his hand at the end. It felt very cool and dry, almost transparent. Five gods, how did I get on to this subject? You will have me leaking, next." He was leaking now, she thought, but he steadfastly ignored the suspect sheen in his eyes, and, politely, she did, too. "Thus, my experience of bastardy." He hesitated, eyed her. "Do you—you, who say you have seen them face-to-face—believe the gods bring us back to those we loved? When our spirits rise?"

"I do not know," she said, surprised into honesty. Was he thinking forward, to Arhys, as well as back to the elder Ser dy Arbanos, in this moment? "Perhaps I've never loved anyone enough to know. I think . . . it is not a fool's hope."

"Hm."

She looked away from his face, feeling an intruder upon that wistful inward frown. Her eye fell on Goram, rocking and clenching his hands again. Outwardly, a grizzled aging menial. Inwardly . . . stripped, plundered, burned-out like some village ravaged by retreating troops.

"How came you by Goram?" Ista asked Illvin. "And where?"

"I was reconnoitering in Jokona, as is my habit whenever I have a spare week. I collect castle and town plans, for a pastime." The brief smile that flitted across his mouth implied that he collected rather more than this, but he went on. "Having ridden down to Hamavik in the guise of a horse dealer, and having accumulated rather more stock than I'd intended, I found myself in need of an extra groom. As a Roknari merchant, I buy out Chalionese prisoners whenever I have a chance. The men with no family have little hope of ransom. Goram less than most, as he'd plainly lost most of his wits and memory. I'd diagnose a knock to the head in his last battle, though there's no scar, so it might have been some other ill treatment, or fever. Or both. It was clear no one else in the market wanted him that day, so I drove a better bargain than I'd expected. As it proved." The smile flickered again. "When we reached Porifors, and I freed him, he asked to stay in my service, as he no longer was sure where his home lay."

By the wall, Goram nodded endorsement to the tale.

Ista drew breath. "Are you aware that he is demon-gnawed?"

Illvin jolted upright. "No!"

Goram looked equally dumfounded. Liss's head jerked around, and she stared at the groom in wonder.

Illvin's eyes narrowed in rapid thought. "How do you know this, Royina?"

"I can see it. I can see his soul-stuff. It's all in rags and tatters."

Illvin blinked, sank back. After a moment he said, more cautiously, "Can you see mine?"

"Yes. To me, it appears as an attenuated white fire, streaming out of your heart to your brother. His soul is gray as a ghost's, beginning to decompose and blur. It is in his body, but it is not attached to his body. It just.. . floats there. Liss's is bright and colorful, but very centered, very solid and tight within the matter that generates it."

Liss, evidently deciding she had been complimented, smiled cheerfully.

After a reflective silence Illvin said, "That must be very distracting for you."

"Yes," she said shortly.

He cleared his throat. "Are you saying, then, that Goram was a sorcerer?"

Goram shook his head in horrified denial. "I'm not ever so, lady!"

"What can you remember, Goram?" Ista asked.

His seamed face worked. "I know I marched with Orico's army. I remember the roya's tents, all red-and-gold silk, shining in the light. I remember . . . marching as a prisoner, with chains on. Working, some field work, hot in the sun."

"Who were your Roknari masters?"

He shook his head. "Don't remember them, much."

"Ships? Were you ever on ships?"

"Don't think so. Horses, yes. There were horses."

Illvin put in, "We've talked before about what he could remember, when I was trying to find out his family. Because he must have been a prisoner for several years, if it was from the time the prince of Borasnen first attempted the fortress of Gotorget, two years before it fell. I think from some things Goram has said that must have been the campaign he was in. But he doesn't remember his captivity either, much. That was why I thought his brains might have been baked by a fever, perhaps just before he came my way."

"Goram, can you remember what has happened to you since Lord Illvin ransomed you?" asked Ista.

"Oh, aye. That don't hurt."

"Can you remember anything at all from just before Lord Illvin bought you out?"

Goram shook his head. "There was a dark place. I liked it because it was cool. Stank, though."

"Wits and memories eaten out, the demon jumped, and yet—not dead," mused Ista. "Abandoning a live mount is not easy for a demon, I gather from dy Cabon; they get all tangled together somehow. Killing the person forces the demon out. Like Umerue. Or like the Quadrene burnings."

"Don't burn me!" cried Goram. He shrank down smaller, almost crouching, and stared in dismay at his own chest "No one will burn you," Illvin said firmly. "Not in Chalion, in any case, and now there is no need, because she says the demon is gone. All gone. Right?" He shot Ista a compelling glare.

"Very gone." And most of Goram with it, it seemed. She wondered if he had been a servant, before—or something more.

"Hamavik ..." murmured Illvin. "How suggestive. Both Goram and Princess Umerue were there at the same time. Could this . . . damage of Goram's have any relation to Umerue's demon?"

It made an enticing sort of connection. And yet. . . "Catti's demon didn't feel as if it had been dining on soldiers. It felt . . . I'm not sure how to put this. Too womanly. I suppose we can try to get information out of it again. I don't think the way it carried on here yesterday was any more usual for a demon than for a person. Or sorcerers would be far more conspicuous."

Liss, Ista noted, was looking most disturbed. Was she seeing a future Foix in Goram's slack, timid, bewildered face? Where was the boy? Ista wasn't desperate enough to pray yet, considering her feelings about prayer, but she thought she might become so if this hideous uncertainty went on much longer.

Ista continued, "Learned dy Cabon told me that demons were very rare, usually—but not these past few years. That the Temple had not seen an outbreak like this since Roya Fonsa's day, fifty years gone. I cannot imagine what rip in the Bastard's hell can be leaking them back into the world in such numbers, but that's what I am beginning to picture."

"Fonsa's day." Illvin's words were starting to slur. "Strange."

"Your time is almost up," Ista said, eyeing the thickening white rope with disfavor. "I can portion you some more."

"You said Arhys would start to rot, though," Illvin objected muzzily. "High summer. Can't have . . . bits of him falling off into his soup, can we now . . . ?" His voice was fading. He roused himself in a spasm of despair. "No! There must be another way! Have to find another way! Lady—come again . . . ?"

"Yes," she said. On the reassurance, he released his grip on the edge of his counterpane and slid down. His face emptied once more into waxen stillness.

*     *     *

ISTA KEPT TO HER CHAMBERS AGAIN THAT DAY, WAITING IMPATIENTLY for the sun to run its course and rise again. She penned her new letters to Cardegoss and, when the sun dropped, paced the stone courtyard until even Liss abandoned her side and sat on a bench to watch her circulate. By the following midmorning she was reduced to mentally composing another sharp letter to the provincar of Tolnoxo, though the first could barely have arrived yet, let alone been acted upon.

Rapid footsteps sounded on the stairs outside; Ista looked up from nibbling on her quill feather to see Liss's braid flash past beyond the grille. She thumped through to Ista's chamber and stuck her head in the door.

"Royina," she said breathlessly. "Something is happening. Lord Arhys has ridden out with a party of armed men—I'm going to the north tower to try to see what I can."

Ista rose so hastily she nearly knocked over her chair. "I'll go with you."

They climbed the winding stone staircase to this vantage behind a hastening crossbowman in Porifors's gray-and-gold tabard. All three went to the northeast edge and peered over the crenellations.

On this side of the castle, opposite the drop to the river, the land rolled away more level with the ridge. A road, pale with dry dust, wound east through the arid, sunny countryside.

"That's the road from Oby," panted Liss.

A pair of horsemen were galloping down it, details blurred by the distance. But even from here, Ista could see that one rider was thick, and the other much thicker. The thicker one wore some brown garment over flashes of white. The stiff gait of a horse attempting to canter under Learned dy Cabon's jouncing weight was distinctive, at least to Ista's experienced eye.

A little way beyond them galloped a dozen other men. An escort . . . ? No. Green tabards of Jokona, here, under the frowning brow of Porifors itself? Ista gasped. The pursuing soldiers were closing on the lead pair.

With a scuff of slippers and a flutter of silks, Lady Cattilara emerged onto the tower top and ran to look over. She stood on tiptoe and leaned, her pale bosom heaving. "Arhys . . . five gods, oh, the Father of Winter protect you ..."

Ista followed her gaze. Below Porifors, Arhys on his dappled gray led a troop of mounted men headlong up the road. The lesser horses were hard pressed to keep up with the gray's reaching strides, and Liss muttered approval of its ground-eating action.

Cattilara's lips parted on her panting, and her eyes grew wide and anxious. She vented a little moan.

"What," murmured Ista to her. "You can't be afraid of his being killed, after all."

Cattilara shot her a sulky look, hunched one shoulder, and returned her stare to the road.

Dy Cabon's overburdened horse was laboring, falling behind. The other horseman—yes, it was certainly Foix dy Gura—pulled up his own mount and motioned the divine onward. Foix's horse capered on the road, fighting his reins. Foix held the beast short with his left hand, grasped his sword hilt, and rose in his stirrups to glare at his pursuers.

No, Foix! Ista thought helplessly. Foix was a strong swordsman, but unsubtle, without Lord Arhys's brilliant speed; he might do for one or two of his enemies, maybe three, who would not rise again, but then the rest would overwhelm him. He had not yet seen the rescue riders approaching, out of his sight in a long hollow. He would throw himself away to save the divine, without need . . .

His right hand rose again from his hilt, fingers clenching and stretching. His arm went out, tensely. A faint violet light seemed to flicker from his palm, and Cattilara's breath drew in sharply in astonishment. Liss did not react; was oblivious to this light, Ista realized.

The first horse in the approaching pack stumbled and fell headlong, spilling its rider. Two others fell atop it before they could pull up. Several horses reared, or shied and tried to bolt to the sides. Foix jerked his mount around and began galloping after dy Cabon.

So. Foix still has his pet bear. And it seems he's taught it to dance. Ista's lips pursed in worry at the implications.

But other worries were more immediate. Past the rise and dip in the road, dy Cabon met Arhys. The divine's lathered brown horse staggered to a halt and stood spread-legged; the dappled gray reared beside it. Gesticulations, pointings. Arhys flung his hand in the air, and his troop reined up around him. More hand-waving, and quietly called orders blurred by the breeze to unintelligibility at Ista's apprehensive height and distance. Swords were drawn, bows cocked, lances leveled, and the troop spread out and began to move up behind the brow of the road.

Dy Cabon's failing horse stumbled on at a walk toward Porifors, but he twisted his bulk in the saddle to watch over his shoulder as Foix crested the hill. Foix recoiled briefly at the sight of the armed troop, but an open handed wave from Arhys, and a wilder arm-circling from dy Cabon, beyond, apparently reassured him. He lashed his horse onward, spoke briefly with Arhys, turned, and drew his sword.

A breathless pause. Ista could hear her blood thudding in her ears, and, foolishly, some bird warbling in the brush, a bright, liquid, indifferent trill, just as if this were some morning of peace and ease. Arhys raised his sword high and swung it down sharply in signal, and his troop thundered forward.

The men from Porifors crested the rise and fell upon the Jokonan troop too fast for the leaders to turn and retreat. The horsemen in both vans were instantly engaged. The Jokonans at the rear yanked their horses around as hard as they could and spurred away, but not faster than at least a couple of crossbow bolts. A rider in a green tabard toppled and fell from his saddle. The range from here was too great for the bowman sharing Ista's vantage on the tower to waste his quarrels in the fray, and he swore in frustration at his impotence, then glanced at the royina and mumbled an apology. Ista waved him full royal dispensation, gripped the hot, gritty stone, and leaned squinting into the light.

Arhys's sword danced in the sun, a glittering blur. His dappled gray was crowded up in the middle of a pack of kicking, squealing horses. A Jokonan soldier who had managed to get his lance unshipped whipped it up over his own mount's head and jammed it awkwardly, backhanded, across the haunches of the mount of the man who presently engaged Arhys's sword. Arhys jerked away. Cattilara screamed as the lance wrenched back again, spattering blood.

"My lord is struck!" cried the bowman, leaning out as tensely as the women. "Oh—no. His sword arm rises. Five gods be thanked."

The horsemen disengaged, the Jokonan swordsman reeling in his saddle. The spearman saw an opening and galloped through to pursue his retreating comrades, bending low over his mount's neck; a crossbow bolt whizzed over his head to encourage him on his way.

Curse it, that spear point had found a mark in Arhys's shoulder; Ista had seen the shock of the contact shove the Jokonan's hand back, almost ripping the shaft from his grip. Yet Arhys's sword swung unhindered . .. Her breath drew in sharply, and she whirled away and started for the stairs.

"Liss, attend me!"

"But Royina, don't you want to see how it comes out?"

"Attend me."

Not waiting to see if the girl followed, Ista yanked up her lilac skirts and shuffled down the tight, dark stone curve of the tower stairs. She almost fell in her haste, then hugged the outer wall and the wider tread, but did not slow.

Out the door, across another courtyard, under the archway, into the stone court. Up the stairs. Her feet thumped across the gallery. She tugged open Illvin's carved door.

Goram was crouched by Lord Illvin's right side, groaning in fear. Illvin's linen tunic was yanked open and half-down. The groom glanced over his shoulder at her entry and cried, "Lady, help!"

His hands, she saw as she neared, were pressed to Illvin's shoulder, and gory with blood. The tunic sleeve was soaked in scarlet. Ista tore around the room until she found a cloth that might be folded into a pad, bundled it clean side outward, and offered it; Goram snatched his hands away just long enough to grab it and stuff it against the jagged wound in Illvin's shoulder.

"I didn't! I didn't!" cried Goram to her, his eye rolling white-rimmed. "It just happened."

"Yes, Goram, I know. It's all right," Ista soothed him. "You're doing well." Almost, she was tempted to squeeze the rope of white fire shut again, returning the ugly gash to its rightful owner. But now was clearly not a good moment to drop Arhys senseless from his saddle. Illvin's closed gray eyelids did not move or flutter or pinch in pain, at least. In his unfeeling state he might be freely tended, washed with brine, jabbed with sewing needles. So, Ista wondered dizzily, if the demon permitted him to wake this noon, would the needle punctures still be there when the wound they held closed fled back to his brother?

The door swung open; Liss at last.

"Liss. Run at once and find some woman used to tending wounds— the Mother's craft must have much practice here—have her bring her soap and salves and needles, and a servant to carry water as well."

"What? Why?" She trod closer in curiosity.

"Lord Illvin is badly cut."

At this point, Liss saw the blood, and she gasped. "Yes, Royina. But—how could . . . ?"

"You saw the spear thrust."

"Oh." Her eyes grew very wide indeed, and she turned and ran.

Goram peeked quickly under the pad and clapped it tight again. Ista hung over his shoulder. The puncture was not so deep as she had feared; already the sluggish flow of blood was diminishing. "Good, Goram. Keep pressing."

"Aye, lady."

Ista waited, shifting from foot to foot, until voices sounded again from the gallery outside. Liss opened the door for a woman in an apron bearing a basket, and ushered her in; a male servant followed.

"Lord Illvin . . ." Ista began, and glanced at Goram, "fell out of bed and struck his shoulder." On what? Ista's invention failed her. She passed rapidly on. "Tend to him and bind him. Help Goram clean up. Speak of this to no one but me, Lord Arhys, or Lady Cattilara."

Those of the rescue party from Porifors who hadn't chased after the Jokonans might be escorting their new guests through the gates just about now, Ista guessed. She strode for the door. "Liss, attend me."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ISTA HURRIED UNDER THE ARCHWAY INTO THE ENTRY COURT IN time to see the flushed and gasping Learned dy Cabon sag from his horse into the arms of one of Lord Arhys's men. The soldier helped the divine totter a few steps to collapse in the narrow shade of the wall by the almond tree. He held a worried hand to dy Cabon's face and spoke to a servant, who hurried away. Dy Cabon struggled out of his semi-concealing brown vest-cloak, letting it fall around him to the petal-strewn pavement.

Foix, looking almost equally hot and harried, jumped from his horse, threw down the reins, and strode to the divine's side.

"Curse it, Foix," dy Cabon wheezed, staring up at him, "I told you to stop playing with that thing."

"Fine," Foix snarled back. "Ride back and lie down by the side of the road for Jokonan dog meat, if you don't like it. The pack could feast for a month."

The servant arrived, and, at the soldier's gesture, upended a bucket of water slowly over dy Cabon, soaking his dirty white robes. Dy Cabon did not recoil or protest, but just sat limply, raising his chin and opening his mouth.

Foix nodded in gratitude and took a tin cup of water that another servant proffered from a second bucket, gulped it down, then scooped up a second and third and repeated the performance. With a fretful grimace, he ladled up another cupful, squatted by dy Cabon's side, and held it to the divine's lips. Dy Cabon lifted a shaking hand to it, guzzling noisily.

The soldier gave Ista a respectful salute as she approached, and murmured to her, "Very close to the heatstroke, that one. It's a bad sign when a man that big stops sweating. But don't worry, Royina, we'll get him right around."

Foix's head swiveled. "Royina!" he cried. "Five gods be thanked! I kiss your hands, I kiss your feet!" He pushed another cup of water into dy Cabon's grip and lunged over to one knee before her skirts, grasping her hands and planting a hot kiss on the back of each. "Ah!" He pressed them to his sweaty forehead in a less formal but entirely sincere addition. He did not rise immediately, but swung one leg around and sat cross-legged and wheezing, allowing his broad shoulders, for just this moment of safety, to slump.

He grinned up at Liss, flanking Ista. "So, you made it here, too. Might have known."

She grinned back. "Yes, you might."

"Been chasing after your dust since Maradi. The fastest horses were always already taken, for some reason."

Her smile stretched to a cheery smirk.

He squinted. "Pretty dress. Quite a change."

She drew back a little, self-consciously. "It's only loaned."

At a clacking of hooves, Foix looked up and scrambled to his feet. Lord Arhys, flanked by another mounted soldier, trotted through the gate on his dappled gray, swung down, and flung his reins to a groom.

"So, Royina." Arhys turned to her, his smile flickering. "I think your lost ones are returned to you."

Foix bobbed him a bow. "Only by virtue of your succor, sir. I had not time to introduce myself, out there. Foix dy Gura, at your service."

"Even if I had not met your brother, your sword and your enemies were recommendation enough. Arhys dy Lutez. Porifors is mine. I shall welcome you in better style hereafter, but I must first see to my scouts. Those Jokonans should not have been on that road—we took two prisoners alive, so I mean to find out how they came so close unseen." He cast Ista a glum glance. "Now do I doubly miss Illvin—his command of the Roknari tongue is better than any other's, here." Arhys gave a wave to Dedicat Pejar, dashing into the entry court with his tunic half fastened and his sword belt askew to greet his restored officer. "Here is one of your own men, to show you how to go on." He called to a servant, "See that these two have everything they need, till my return. Whatever Pejar or the royina ask."

The servant gave him an acknowledging half bow. Arhys's gaze was wary, sweeping past dy Cabon, still sitting bedraggled on the pavement. The divine made an exhausted hand motion, a truncated blessing, promising greater courtesies later.

Arhys turned for his horse again, but paused as Ista grasped him by the sleeve. She reached upward and touched his tunic, torn and bloody on the right shoulder, felt through the rip, and ran her fingers over his cool, unbroken skin. She turned her hand over before him to silently display the dark carmine smear. "At your earliest spare moment, March, I suggest you come inspect your brother's wound. Your brother's new wound."

His lips parted in dismay; he met her level gaze, and winced. "I see."

"Ride carefully, till then. Wear your mail."

"We were in haste—" He fingered the rip, his frown deepening. "Indeed." He gave her a grim nod and swung up again on his sidling horse. Motioning to his mounted man to follow, he cantered out.

Foix glanced around and back to Pejar, worry in his eyes. "Is Ferda here? Is he well?"

"Well, sir, but gone looking for you," Pejar replied. "He's probably reached Maradi by now. I expect he'll make the circle and turn up back here in a few days, swearing at the waste of horseshoes."

Foix grimaced. "I trust he won't take the same road we did. Wasn't what the march of Oby led me to expect at all."

Why are you not now in the temple hospital at Maradi? Ista wanted to ask, but decided to wait. Foix's soul was as vigorous and centered as Liss's, but it appeared to her inner eye that a bear-shaped shadow lurked in his gut. It seemed to sense her scrutiny, for it curled tighter, as if attempting to hibernate. She motioned the hovering servant to her side. "See that these men are speedily refreshed, especially the divine, and lodged in rooms near me."

"Yes, Royina."

She added to Foix, "We must speak of—everything, as soon as we may. Have Pejar direct you to me in the stone court as soon as you are both recovered."

"Yes," he said eagerly, "we must hear all your tale. Lord Arhys's ambush was the talk of Oby, yesterday."

Ista sighed. "So much of dire import has happened since then, I had nearly forgot it."

His brows climbed. "Oh? We'll hasten to your side, then."

He bowed and turned away to assist the servant in coaxing dy Cabon back to his feet. Foix seemed very practiced at it, as if hauling the fat man up and forcing him to move had become second nature of late; dy Cabon's grumbles were equally perfunctory. The damp divine did not so much drip as steam, but he seemed to be gaining relief from his initial distress.

Cattilara's light tread echoed in the archway. The men looked around. Despite his overheated debility, dy Cabon smiled in a Cattilara-smitten fashion. Foix blinked, and went rather still.

"Where is my lord?" Cattilara demanded in anxiety.

"He has ridden back out with his scouts," Ista said. "It seems that spear thrust we saw found another target."

Cattilara's eyes widened. Her head turned toward the stone court.

"Yes," said Ista. "He is being cared for now, however."

"Oh. Good."

Cattilara's sigh of relief was premature, in Ista's judgment. The girl had not yet thought it through. But she likely would. "Lord Arhys will return by noon—no doubt."

Cattilara's lips pinched at her, briefly.

Ista went on, "Lady Cattilara dy Lutez, Marchess of Porifors, may I introduce to you my spiritual conductor, Learned Chivar dy Cabon, and Foix dy Gura, officer-dedicat of the Daughter's Order. You have met his captain and brother Ferda."

"Oh, yes." Cattilara managed a distracted curtsey. "Welcome to Porifors." She paused, returning Foix's uncertain look. For a moment, they stood as stiffly as two strange cats just sighting each other. The two demon shadows within them were so tightly closed in Ista's presence, it was hard to guess their reaction to this proximity, but it did not seem one of joyous greeting. Liss, observing Foix's lack of the more usual male response to the lovely marchess, brightened slightly.

Ista gestured to the waiting servant, and added, with deliberate emphasis, "Lord Arhys detailed this man to see to their needs. The divine is dangerously fatigued from the heat and should have care at once."

"Oh, yes," agreed Cattilara rather vaguely. "Pray continue. I shall welcome you all more properly . . . later." She dipped a curtsey, Foix produced a bow, and she fluttered away up the staircase. Foix and dy Cabon followed the servant and Pejar through the archway, presumably to where the Daughter's men were quartered.

Seized with unease, Ista watched Cattilara depart. She was suddenly reminded from Lord dy Cazaril's testimony that there were slower ways for demons to slay their mounts. Tumors, for example. Might one be started already? She tried to read for it in Cattilara's soul-stuff, some black blot of disorder and decay. The girl roiled so, it was hard to be sure. Ista could imagine the consequences—the passionate Cattilara, mad with hope, insisting that the symptoms were her longed-for pregnancy, jealously guarding a belly that swelled apace not with life but with death . . . Ista shivered.

Illvin speaks truth. We must find a better way. And soon.

*     *     *

LESS THAN AN HOUR PASSED BEFORE THE TWO STRAYS RETURNED TO Ista in the stone court. They both looked much revived, having evidently undergone some rough-and-ready bath involving sloshing buckets and drains. Wet hair combed, in dry clothes that, if not exactly clean, were less sweat-stained, they managed some ragged semblance of a courtly style in her honor.

Ista gestured the divine to a stone bench in the arcade's shade, and sat by his side. Foix and Liss settled themselves at her feet. Liss spent a moment plucking her unaccustomed skirts into a more graceful arrangement.

"Royina, tell us of the battle," Foix began eagerly.

"Your brother had a better view. Get his account, when he returns. I would hear your tale first. What happened after we abandoned you on the road?"

"I would not say, abandoned," objected dy Cabon. "Say saved, rather. Your hiding place worked, or else the god heard the prayers from my heart. And bowels. I didn't dare even whisper aloud."

Foix snorted agreement. "Aye. That was an ugly hour, crouching in that cold water—seems more attractive in retrospect—listening to the Jokonans thump by overhead. We finally crawled out of the culvert and took to the brush, trying to stay out of sight of the road but follow after you. That was a scramble. It was past dark by the time we reached the village at the crossroads, and the poor villagers were just starting to creep back to their homes. A good bit poorer, after the Jokonan locusts had passed through, but it could have been much worse. They'd evidently thought Liss a madwoman at first, but by that time they were praising her as a saint sent from the Daughter Herself."

Liss grinned. "I no doubt sounded a madwoman when I first rode in shrieking. Thanks be for my chancellery tabard. I'm glad they listened. I didn't wait to see."

"So we learned. The divine was done in by then—"

"You weren't much better," muttered dy Cabon.

"—so we took their charity for the night. Never ceases to amaze me, when people with so little share their bit with strangers. Five gods rain blessings upon 'em, for they'd just had their allotment of bad luck for a year at least.

"I talked them into loaning a mule to the divine, though they sent a boy along to be sure it got back again, and we started for Maradi in the morning, following Liss. I'd have preferred to chase you, Royina, but not unequipped as we were. I wanted an army. The goddess must have heard me, for we found one a few hours later, coming up the road. The provincar of Tolnoxo loaned us mounts, and you can believe I jumped to join his troop. Would have saved steps to let them come to us back at the village, for we passed through there again in the afternoon—returned their mule, at least, which made its owner happy." He glanced at dy Cabon. "I probably should have sent dy Cabon on to the temple at Maradi—he might have caught up with Liss—but he refused to be parted from me."

Dy Cabon growled reluctant agreement under his breath. "I wasted two miserable days in dy Tolnoxo's baggage train. The parts of me that meet a saddle were pounded to bruises by then, but even I could see we were following too slowly."

"Yes, despite all my howling." Foix grimaced. "The Tolnoxans gave up at the border, claiming the Jokonan column would break up into a dozen parts and scatter, and that only the men of Caribastos, who knew their own country, had a chance of netting them. I said we only needed to follow one part. Dy Tolnoxo gave me leave to take my horse and try it, and I almost did just to defy him. Should have; I might have caught up in time for Lord Arhys's welcoming fete. But the divine was mad to get me back to Maradi, for all the good that proved to be in the end, and I was worried about Liss, so I let myself be persuaded."

"Not mad," dy Cabon denied. "Justly worried. I saw those flies."

Foix huffed in exasperation. "Will you leave off about those accursed flies! They were no one's beloved pets. There were a million more in the manure pile they came from. There is no shortage of flies in Tolnoxo. No need to ration 'em!"

"That's not the point, and you know it."

"Flies . . . ?" said Liss, bewildered.

Dy Cabon turned to her in eager, and irate, explication. "It was after we left dy Tolnoxo's troop and came at last to the temple house in Maradi. The next morning. I came into Foix's chamber and found him drilling a dozen flies."

Liss's nose wrinkled. "Ick. Wouldn't they squash?"

"No—not—they were marching around. In a parade array, back and forth across the tabletop, in little ranks."

"File flies," murmured Foix, irrepressibly.

"He was experimenting with his demon, that's what," said dy Cabon. "After I told him to leave the thing strictly alone!"

"They were only flies." Foix's embarrassed grin twisted. "Granted, they did better than some recruits I've tried to train."

"You were starting to dabble in sorcery." The divine scowled. "And you haven't stopped. What did you do to make that Jokonan's horse stumble?"

"Nothing counter to nature. I understood your lecture perfectly well—your god knows you've repeated it often enough! You can't claim that turmoil and disorder didn't freely flow from the demon—what a splendid pileup! No, nor that it didn't result in good! If your order's sorcerers can do it, why can't I?"

"They are properly supervised and instructed!"

"Five gods know, you are certainly supervising and instructing me. Or at least, spying and badgering. Comes to much the same thing, I suspect." Foix hunched. "Anyway," he returned to his narrative, "they told us in Maradi that Liss had ridden to the fortress of Oby in Caribastos, thinking it the likeliest place to find the royina. Or if not the royina, someone fit to pursue her. So we followed, as fast as I could make dy Cabon ride. We arrived two days after Liss had left, but we heard the royina was rescued and safe at Porifors, so took a day to rest the divine's bruised saddle parts—"

"And yours," muttered dy Cabon.

"And followed on to Porifors," Foix raised his voice over this, "on a road that the march of Oby told us was perfectly safe and impossible to miss. The second part of his assurance proved true. Daughter's tears, I thought the Jokonans had come back for a rematch, and we were going to lose the race this time, within sight of our refuge."

Dy Cabon rubbed his forehead in a weary, worried gesture. Ista wondered if his morning's dangerous parching had left him with a lingering headache.

"I am very concerned about Foix's demon," said Ista.

"I, as well," said dy Cabon. "I thought the Temple could treat him, but it is not to be. The Bastard's Order has lost the saint of Rauma."

"Who?" said Ista.

"The divine of the god in Rauma—it is a town in Ibra, not far from the border mountains—she was the living agent of the god for the miracle of—do you remember that ferret, Royina? And what I told you about it?"

"Yes."

"For weak elementals that have taken up residence in animals, to force the demon into the dying divine who will return it to the god, it is sufficient to slay the animal in his or her presence."

"Thus the end of that ferret," said Ista.

"Poor thing," said Liss.

"It is so," dy Cabon admitted. "Hard on the innocent beast, but what will you? The occurrences are normally quite rare." He took a breath. "The Quadrenes use a related system to rid themselves of sorcerers. A cure worse than the disease. But, once in a great while, a saint may come along who is gifted by the god with the trick of it."

"The trick of what?" said Ista, with a patience she did not feel.

"The trick of extracting the demon from a human mount and returning it to the god, and yet leaving the person alive. And with the soul and wits intact, or nearly so, if it goes well."

"And . . . what is the trick of it?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

Ista's voice grew edged. "Did you sleep through all your classes in that seminary back in Casilchas, dy Cabon? You are supposed to be my spiritual conductor! I swear you could not conduct a quill from one side of a page to the other!"

"It's not a trick," he said, harried. "It's a miracle. You cannot pull miracles out of a book, by rote."

Ista clenched her teeth, both infuriated and ashamed. "Yes," she said lowly. "I know." She sat back. "So ... what happened to the saint?"

"Murdered. By that same troop of Jokonan raiders who overtook us on the road in Tolnoxo."

"Ah," breathed Ista. "That divine. I heard of her. The march of Rauma's bastard half sister, I was told by one of the women captives." Raped, tortured, and burned alive in the rubble of the Bastard's Tower. Thus do the gods reward Their servants.

"Is she?" said dy Cabon in a tone of interest. "I mean . . . was she."

Liss put in indignantly, "What blasphemy, to slay a saint! Lord Arhys said that of the three hundred men who left Jokona, no more than three returned alive. Now we see why!"

"What waste." The divine signed himself. "But if it is so, she was surely avenged."

"I would be considerably more impressed with your god, dy Cabon," said Ista through her teeth, "if He could have arranged one life's worth of simple protection in advance, rather than three hundred lives' worth of gaudy vengeance afterward." She drew a long, difficult breath. "My second sight has returned."

His head swiveled, and his arrested gaze flashed to her face. "How did this come about? And when?"

Ista snorted. "You were there, or nearly so. I doubt you have forgot that dream."

His overheated pink flushed redder, then paled. Whatever he was trying to say, he could not get it out. He choked and tried again. "That was real!"

Ista touched her forehead. "He kissed me on the brow, here, as once His Mother did, and laid an unwelcome burden thereupon. I told you things of dire import have been happening here. That is the least of them. Did you hear any rumor, at Oby, of the murder of Princess Umerue by a jealous courtier of hers, some two or three months ago here at Porifors? And the stabbing of Ser Illvin dy Arbanos?"

"Oh, yes," said Foix. "It was the next greatest gossip there, after your rescue. Lord dy Oby said he was most sorry to hear about Lord Illvin, and that Lord Arhys must miss him greatly. He knew the brothers of old, he said, from long before he became Lord Arhys's father-in-law, and said they always steered together, up and down this corner of Caribastos for going on twenty years, like a man's right and left hands on his reins."

"Well, that was not the true story of the crime."

Foix looked interested, if skeptical; dy Cabon looked interested and extremely worried.

"I have been three days sorting through the lies and misdirections. Umerue may have been a princess once, but by the time she came here, she was a demon-eaten sorceress. Sent, I was told, and this part I believe, to suborn Porifors and deliver it to someone in or near the court of Jokona. The effect this might have on the coming Visping campaign, especially if the treachery was not revealed until the most critical possible moment, I leave to your military imagination, Foix."

Foix nodded, slowly. The first part, he had no trouble following, obviously. What was to come . . .

"In a secret scrambling fight, both Umerue and Lord Arhys were slain."

Dy Cabon blinked. "Royina, don't you mean Lord Illvin? We just met Lord Arhys."

"Just so. The demon jumped to Arhys's wife—a mistake from its point of view, it appears, because she promptly seized control of it and forced it to stuff Arhys's severed soul back into his own body, stealing strength from his younger brother Illvin to keep his corpse moving all the same. Some distorted species of death magic—I will ask you, Learned, to expound the theology of it at your earliest convenience. And then the marchess feigned it was Illvin injured, and the princess killed, by the princess's Jokonan clerk, whom she terrified into fleeing."

"So that's what I felt when I saw her," whispered Foix, sounding much enlightened. "Another demon."

"I witnessed everyone's testimony," avowed Liss loyally. "It's all true. We even questioned the demon, though that wasn't much use. When Lord Arhys was struck in the fight this morning by that Jokonan lancer, the cut appeared on Lord Illvin's body. It was dreadfully uncanny." She added reflectively, "Bled like a stuck pig, too. Well, so he would—they do stick pigs with lances, I think."

Ista glanced at the sun and measured the shortening shadows in the stone courtyard. "In a while, you will speak with all concerned, and bear witness as well. But dy Cabon, listen. I do not know why your god has brought me to this house of woe. I do not know what, or who, can be saved out of this ghastly tangle. I do know that at some point, one way or another, that demon has to be driven out of Lady Cattilara. It is wild to escape, with her body by preference, but it will kill her in order to fly in another's if it gains the chance. Arhys is beginning to deteriorate, body and, I fear, mind as well. Worse—I suspect his soul may already be sundered. Lord Illvin is dying slowly, being drained by this sorcery of more life than his body can replace. When he dies, his brother ends, and Cattilara, I believe, will be swallowed by her demon."

She stopped, drew breath, looked around at the shocked faces staring back at her. Not one, she realized with a chill, was staring at her as though she had gone mad. They were all staring at her as though she was going to tell them what to do next.

Booted footsteps echoed in the archway. Ista looked up to see Lord Arhys enter, observe her and her little court, and approach. He stopped and gave her a bow, then stood taken rather aback by the staggered, searching looks he was collecting from his new guests.

"Lord Arhys." Ista's nod acknowledged the bow. "I have been apprising my escort's acting captain and my spiritual conductor of the true state of affairs here at Porifors. It is necessary that they know, that they may guard and advise me to best effect."

"I see." He forced a grimace into an unfelt smile. He paused a moment as if considering what to say for himself—apologize for being dead, perhaps?—then, apparently defeated by the quandary, passed on to more immediate affairs. "My scouts are dispatched, but not yet returned. Our prisoners were not very cooperative, but it appears their patrol was the screen of some larger force, given the task of cutting communications on the road between Porifors and Oby. And that the attack on dy Gura and the divine was premature in some fashion that we were unable to extract from them, for all the howls we squeezed out. We are taking precautions—topping our cisterns, warning the town, sending riders to alert outlying areas to be on guard. I have heard nothing of such a Jokonan force from my own men along the border, but ... I have been much distracted from my duties these past few days."

Ista pursed her lips on a worried exhalation. "An attack from Jokona? Why now?"

He shrugged. "A delayed reprisal for the death of their princess? We had expected one before this. Or ... a much-less-delayed attempt to regain a great prize, lately lost." His gaze on her was grave.

Despite the heat, Ista shivered. "I would not chose to bring down such trouble on any host, least of all you. Perhaps ... I should remove to Oby." Run away? A beguilingly sensible cowardice, that. Leave this castle, leave this tangle, leave these anguished and benighted souls to sink under the accumulating weight of their misjudgments, misery, and love . . . she could run away. She could.

"Perhaps." He gave her an ambiguous nod. "But only if we can be sure we have secured the road, or else we would just be delivering you into Jokonan hands, a gift already unwrapped. I must ride out this afternoon—I can't stop now. You must see that," he added with peculiar earnestness. "You must not stop me now."

"Since I know not how," she sighed, "you are safe from that chance for the moment. Other chances, I cannot speak for."

"I shall be forced to take my rest, shortly—"

"Illvin must be allowed to eat, especially now," she said, alarmed.

"I do not wish otherwise. But I would see his new wound, first."

"Ah. That would be wise, I think."

As he seemed to expect her company, she rose and followed him up the stairs, her people trailing in unconcealed curiosity. The entry of so many persons alarmed Goram, whom Ista tried to reassure with a few soft words; he seemed more consoled by Liss's kindly pat on his shoulder. At the march's direction, he unwrapped Illvin's new bandage. Arhys's inspection was brief, experienced, and grim. Foix and dy Cabon peered with diffident interest at the bloody tear in Arhys's tunic as he bent over his silent brother. When the march turned away, they crowded up to the bedside to get a whispered account from Liss.

Arhys's hand clenched and unclenched on his sword hilt. He murmured to Ista, standing with him a little apart, "I confess, I was not altogether sorry to find those Jokonan soldiers out on my road this morning. I think some part of me was starting to hope for a better death. Less .. . ignominious, than the first, less shameful to my father's honor. I see there is a problem with this plan."

"Yes," said Ista.

"I feel as though I am lost in some dark and evil maze, and cannot find my way out."

"Yes," said Ista. "But... no longer alone in the labyrinth, at least."

His smile flickered; he squeezed her hand. "Indeed. My good company grows apace since the gods guided you here. That is a greater comfort than I had expected."

The meal tray arrived. Lord Arhys excused himself; Ista trusted he would find the safe harbor of his bed before his midday collapse overtook him. She ushered her own people out again, to give Goram time to do his necessary work, but she directed dy Cabon to stay, assist, and observe.

Leaning on the gallery railing, she watched Lord Arhys stride out of sight below, trailing the subtle smoke of his eroding soul. She rubbed her palm, still tingling where he had gripped it.

I could run away. No one else here can, but I could.

If I chose to.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FOIX, DISQUIET IN HIS EYES, LEANED HIS ELBOWS ON THE balustrade by Ista's side to watch Arhys exit. "Remarkable man," he observed. "If that Jokonan sorceress's purpose was to remove Porifors from the strategic map, paralyze its strength as a fortress . . . she may have achieved some success even in her failure, to have crippled such a commander. Or worse than crippled, the Daughter forbid."

Liss came over to rest against the rail on Ista's other side, listening and frowning in worry.

"What did you sense of that demon, when you met Lady Cattilara in the forecourt?" Ista asked Foix.

He shrugged. "Nothing very clearly. I felt. . . prickly. Uneasy."

"You did not see it, riding within her soul like a shadow?"

"No, Royina." He hesitated. "Can you?"

"Yes."

He cleared his throat. "Ah ... can you see mine?" Absently, his hand rubbed his belly.

"Yes. It looks like the shadow of a bear, hiding in a cave. Does it speak to you?"

"Not. . . exactly. Well, a little. Not in words, but I can sense it, if I sit quietly and pay attention. It is much calmer and happier than it was at first. Tamer." He managed a lopsided grin. "I have been training it to do some tricks, when the divine does not harass me."

"Yes, I saw the one on the road. Very clever of you both, but very dangerous. Do you have any sense of what it was, or where it was, before it found you?"

"A bear, wandering in the wild. A bird before that, I think, for neither the bear nor I could ever have viewed the mountains from above, and I now seem to have such a memory. Confused, but I do not think I dreamed it. Swallowing huge insects, ugh. Except that they weren't ugh. Ugh! Before that ... I don't know. I think it does not remember being newborn, any more than I remember being a mewling infant. It had existence, but not wits as such."

Ista straightened, stretching her aching back. "When we return to Lord Illvin's chamber, study his attendant, Goram. I believe he once held a demon, as you now do."

"The groom was a sorcerer? Ha. Well, why not? If a demon can lodge in a bear, why not in a simpleton?"

"I do not think he was always a simpleton. I suspect he may have once been a cavalry officer of Roya Orico's army, before he was taken prisoner and enslaved unransomed. Study Goram closely, Foix. He may be your mirror."

"Oh," said Foix, and shrank a little. Liss's frown deepened.

At length the carved door opened, and Goram gestured them all back inside. The sheets had been changed, the bloodied linen robe whisked away, and Illvin dressed for company in his tunic and trousers, his hair tied back. Ista was obscurely grateful that he was made so presentable before her companions. Goram fetched the chair for her, and with little bobbing bows seated her by Illvin's bedside.

Dy Cabon reported to Ista in an awed whisper, "I watched the wounds close up, just now. Extraordinary."

Lord Illvin gingerly rubbed his right shoulder and smiled across at Ista. "I seem to have missed a busy morning, Royina, except not quite. Learned dy Cabon has been telling me of his alarming ride. I am glad your lost company is returned to you. I hope your heart is eased."

"Much eased."

Dy Cabon took the stool at the foot of the bed, a precarious perch for his bulk. Ista introduced Foix, and gave a short, blunt precis of his encounter with the bear, by way of preamble to describing his performance on the road. Goram hovered anxiously on the bed's other side, putting bites to Illvin's mouth while he listened.

Illvin, frowning, fended off a piece of bread, and said, "That such a raiding party should come so close to Porifors indicates either a young Jokonan hothead swaggering for show, or something moving behind. What say our scouts?"

"Dispatched, not yet returned," said Ista. "Lord Arhys prepares, he tells us, and has sent out warnings to the countryside."

"Good." Illvin eased back against his pillows. "Five gods help me, the days flit past me like hours. I would be out there riding now!"

She added, "I told your brother to wear his mail."

"Ah," he said. "Yes." His mouth set, his left hand going again to probe his elusively wounded shoulder. He stared down at his feet, absorbed in who-knew-what reflections. Ista wondered if his mind circled as dizzily as her own.

She drew a long breath. "Goram."

He paused in his spooning. "Lady?"

"Were you ever in Rauma?"

He blinked in bewilderment. "Don't know the place."

"It's a town in Ibra."

He shook his head. "We were at war with Ibra, before. Weren't we? I know I was in Hamavik," he offered as if in compensation. "Lord Illvin found me there."

"Your soul shows demon scars, dreadful ones. And yet... if you had been a sorcerer during your captivity, commanding the resources of a demon, you ought to have been able to escape, or otherwise improve your lot."

Goram looked daunted, as though being chastised for some lapse.

Ista opened a palm to soothe him, and continued, "There are ... too many demons about. As if some great outbreak had occurred, the divine told me, is that not so, Learned?"

Dy Cabon rubbed his chins. "It's surely beginning to appear so."

"Has the Temple mapped the sightings? Are they coming from one place, or from every place at once?"

A thoughtful look came over his suety face. "I have not heard from every place, but of the reports I have heard, there do seem to have been more toward the north, yes."

"Hm." Ista stretched her tight shoulders again. "Lord Illvin, dy Cabon has also told me that the divine of the Bastard in Rauma was a saint of his order, gifted with the ability to draw demons from their mounts and return them, somehow, miraculously, to the god. The Jokonan raiders slew her."

Illvin breathed out through pursed lips. "That's an unfortunate loss just now."

"Yes. Else he would have hauled Foix straight to her, and not come here instead. But now I'm wondering if it may have been more than a mischance. When I was captive, riding in the Jokonan column's baggage train, I saw a strange sight. A high-ranking officer, perhaps the commander himself, rode along tied to his saddle like a prisoner, or a fainting wounded man. His face was slack ... he could not control his drooling, and he mumbled, without words, or sometimes cried out as if in fear, or wept. I thought perhaps a head blow had destroyed his reason, but he bore no bandages or bloodstains whatsoever. I now wonder, if I'd had my second sight then—what great gouges I might have seen within his soul."

Illvin blinked at the disturbing word-picture. His wits leapt ahead to the conclusion Ista had not yet stated aloud. "Might he have been another sorcerer in the service of Jokona, do you think? Commanding that column?"

"Perhaps. What if the saint of Rauma did not die without a fight, or wholly in vain? What if it was she who'd ripped his demonic powers out by the roots, even as she fell to common violence? At the start of a campaign, do we not burn the enemy's crops, fill their wells, deny them their resources? I think a saint who could banish demons at will would be a powerful resource, against an enemy who commanded, perhaps, more such sorcerers. Maybe more than those two. Why Rauma, you asked me yesterday. What if the saint's murder, which we took for an incidental evil of the raid, was instead its main purpose?"

"But demons do not readily work together," objected dy Cabon. "One sorcerer, high in the Jokonan court, could do much damage, were he of evil bent. Well, or of loyal bent," he conceded fairly. "To Jokona, that is. But to call up or command a legion of demons—that is the vocation of the Bastard alone. Unimaginable hubris in a man, and doubly so for a Quadrene. Also, such a perilous concentration of demons would generate chaos all around it."

"War gathers on these borders," said Ista. "A greater concentration of chaos I can hardly imagine." She rubbed her forehead. "Lord Illvin, you have studied the court of Jokona, I suspect. Tell me something of it. What are Prince Sordso's principal advisors and commanders like?"

He eyed her with shrewd interest. "It's mostly still the cadre of older men he inherited from his father. His first chancellor was his paternal uncle, though he's lately died. The present general of Jokona has served for years. Sordso's own friends and boon companions are a much younger lot, but he hasn't had a chance to put any into positions of power. Too soon to tell if any of them will prove fitted for war or government, though they seem to run largely to rich men's sons with too little chance, or drive, to learn their own trades. Arhys and I have speculated which will move up when the old men finally start to die off.

"Oh, and his mother, Princess Joen—Dowager Princess Joen. She was Sordso's regent, along with his uncle and the general, until he came of age. I wanted to probe down that way when she took the reins a few years ago, but Arhys was seized with a fit of deference for her sex and sad widowhood. And anyway, in the midst of what proved to be Roya Orico's final illness and death, we feared Cardegoss might not be able to rescue us from our mistakes. Or worse, might fail to support a victory."

"Tell me more of Joen," said Ista slowly. "Did you ever meet her? If Umerue had held to her initial plan, she would have become your mother-in-law."

"Daunting thought. It is a measure of Umerue's powers that such a drawback never troubled my mind. I've never met Joen face-to-face. She is some ten or fifteen years older than I am, and had more or less disappeared into the women's quarters by the time I was old enough to notice the politics of the princedom. I will say, she was the most continually pregnant princess in recent Jokonan history—certainly did her duty by her husband. Though she was not entirely fortunate in her children, for all her efforts. Out of a dozen or so, only three sons, and two of those died young. Some miscarriages and stillbirths, too, I think. Seven girls lived to marry—Sordso has family alliances all over the Five Princedoms. Oh, and she takes her descent from the Golden General most seriously. Makes up for the disappointments of her husband and son, I suppose—or maybe it creates them, I don't know."

The Golden General, the Lion of Roknar. For a time, back in Roya Fonsa's reign, the brilliant Quadrene leader had looked to unite the Five Princedoms for the first time in centuries, and roll like a tide over the weak Quintarian royacies. But he had died untimely at the age of thirty, destroyed by aging Roya Fonsa in a work of death magic, during a night of towering self-immolation. The rite that killed both leaders had saved Chalion from the Roknari threat, but also spilled the curse that would haunt Fonsa's heirs down to Ista's day, and beyond. The Golden General had left only renewed political disorder in the princedoms for legacy, and a few young children, Joen the least and youngest.

No surprise, that she might grow up regarding him as a lost hero. But if Joen could not follow in her great father's striding steps, barred by her sex from war and politics, might she have at least sought to recreate him in a son? All those pregnancies . . . Ista, who had experienced two, did not underestimate their brutal drain on a woman's body and energy.

Ista frowned. "I was thinking about what Catti's demon said. She is coming, it cried, as if this were some dire event. I had taken it to refer to me, for I believe my god-touched state is a consternation to demons, but—I wasn't coming. I was already there. So that makes no sense, really. Not that much of what it had to say made sense."

Illvin remarked thoughtfully, "If someone in the court of Jokona is indeed dipping into sorcery for the purpose of moving against Chalion, I must say, it is not going all that well for him. Both his demon-agents— sad Umerue and the column's commander—were lost in the first two trials of their prowess, if your guess is good."

"Perhaps," said Ista. "Yet not without advancing Jokonan goals. The saint of Rauma is dead, and Porifors ... is much distracted."

He glanced up sharply at this. "Arhys still leads us—does he not?"

"For the moment. It's clear his reserves are drawing down."

Illvin, reminded, took another bite of bread and dutifully chewed. His face screwed up in thought. He swallowed, and said, "It occurs to me that we do have one here who must know all the inward plans, if such exist, of whoever in Sordso's court is behind this. The demon itself. We should question it again. More firmly." He added after a reflective moment, "It might be better if Arhys were not present this time."

"I ... quite see your point. Here, perhaps, tomorrow?"

"If it may be arranged. Not sure if Catti will agree, without Arhys persuading her."

"She must be made to," said Ista.

"I will have to leave that part to you."

With some relief, if Ista read him right. She said, "But were these losses all of Jokona's sorcerers, or two of many? If all the elementals that have lately been found in Chalion are lost or escaped from the same source, how many more were captured as intended? And how?

Perhaps these two were sacrificed, as a commander with many men would send some into a breach, knowing he will bear losses, but counting the gain to himself worth the cost. But not if he has few men. Unless he is very desperate . . ." She tapped her fingers on her chair arm. "No, it cannot be Joen. She would not put a demon into her own daughter." She glanced at Goram. "Unless she were terribly ignorant of their nature and effects, and in that case I can hardly see how she could control one sorcerer, let alone many."

Illvin cast her an odd look. "You love your own daughter very much, I take it."

"Who would not?" Ista's smile softened. "She is the bright star of Chalion. Beyond my hope and my deserving, for I could do little enough for her during my dark times."

"Hm." He smiled curiously at her. "And yet you said you'd never loved anyone enough to guess at heaven's hope."

She made a little excusing gesture. "I think the gods may give us children to teach us what true love really is, that we may be fitted for Their company at the last. A lesson for those of us whose hearts are too dull and inert to learn any other way."

"Inert? Or merely . . ."

The rope of white fire was beginning to attenuate; his hand fell back weakly to his coverlet. Goram glanced with dismay at the amount of food still left on the tray. Ista watched Illvin sink back, his eyes closing, and clenched her teeth with frustration. She wanted that mind in her service against this conundrum, but Arhys's body seemed equally needed today. She wished it were winter, that she might steal another hour for Illvin. But it was too beastly hot to let the march start to rot.

"Come again, shining Ista," he breathed with a fading sigh. "Bring Catti ..."

Gone. It was like watching him die, every day. She did not desire the practice.

*     *     *

ISTA TURNED ASIDE AT THE STAIRS DOWN TO THE STONE COURT.

"Learned, please attend upon me. We must talk."

"And I, Royina?" said Liss hopefully.

"You may . . . make yourself comfortable within call."

Taking the hint, Liss strolled away to a bench on the court's far end. After an uncertain moment, Foix followed after her, looking not displeased. They put their heads together the moment they sat down.

Ista led dy Cabon back to the bench in the cloister walk's shade and gestured him to a seat. He settled himself with a tired grunt. The days of riding and anxiety had told on him; his stained white robes hung loosely, and his belt was cinched in a few new notches. Ista, remembering the god's immense girth and overflowing abundance in dy Cabon's dream-borrowed body, could not, on the whole, regard this shrinking as an improvement.

She sat beside him, and began, "You say you witnessed the banishing of an elemental, when the ferret's rider was discharged from the world. How exactly was it accomplished? What did you see?"

He shrugged his thick shoulders. "There was not a great deal to see with my poor eyes. The archdivine of Taryoon led me into the presence of the divine who had volunteered for the task. A very elderly woman, she was, frail as paper in the temple hospital bed. She seemed three-fourths detached from the world already. There is so much to delight us in the world of matter—to tire of it seems ungrateful to me, but she told me she'd had all the pain she could eat and would pass from this banquet to a better one. She genuinely desired her god, as a weary sojourner desires his own bed."

Ista said, "A man I know who had a mystic vision, under the most extraordinary circumstances, once told me he saw the dying souls rising up like flowers in the goddess's garden. But he was a devotee of the Lady of Spring. I think each god may have some different metaphor—

fine animals for the Son of Autumn, I have heard, strong men and beautiful women for the Father and the Mother. For the Bastard—what?"

"He takes us as we are. I hope."

"Hm."

"But no," dy Cabon continued, "there were no special tricks or even prayers. The divine said she did not need them. As she was the one doing the dying, I didn't argue. I asked her what it was like, dying. She gave me such a look out of the corner of her eye, and told me, pretty tartly, that when she found out she'd be sure to let me know. The arch-divine signed me to cut the ferret's throat then, which I did, into a basin. The old woman sighed, and snorted, as if at some other foolish remark like mine, which we could not hear. And then she stopped. It took her only a moment to pass from life to death, but it was unmistakable. Not a sleep. An emptying out. And that was that. Except for the cleaning up after."

"That... is not especially helpful," sighed Ista.

"It was what I saw. I suspect she saw more. But I can scarcely imagine what."

"In my dream—the dream you entered into—the god kissed me twice. The first time on the brow"—she touched the spot—"as His Mother once did, and so I recognized it as the gift of second sight, of seeing the world of spirit directly as the gods do, for I had received it so before. But then he kissed me a second time, on—in—my mouth. More deeply and disturbingly. Learned, tell me, what was the meaning of that second kiss? You must know—you were right there."

He gulped and blushed. "Royina, I cannot guess. The mouth is the Bastard's own theological sign and signifier upon our bodies, as the thumbs are upon our hands. Did He give you no other clues but me?"

She shook her head. "The next day, Goram, with some very confused notion about a royina—even if only a dowager royina—being able to undo what a princess had done, invited me in to kiss his master. And for an elated moment, I thought I'd solved the riddle—that it was to be a kiss of life, as in the children's story. But it didn't work. Nor on Lord Arhys, when I attempted him, later. I did not take the trial further afield, fortunately for my reputation in this castle. The kiss was clearly something else, some other gift or burden."

Ista drew breath. "I face a three-way knot. Two parts may be loosed together; if I could find some way to banish Cattilara's demon, Illvin would be freed, and the marchess saved. But what hope may be found for Arhys? I saw his soul, Learned. He is surely sundered, or my inner eyes are blind. It would be bad enough to complete his death, and lose him to his god. It would be worse to secure his damnation, and lose him to nothingness."

"I ... um . . . know that some souls, suffering especially disrupted deaths, have lingered for a few days, to be helped on their way by the prayers and ceremonies of their funerals. Slipped through the doors of their deaths before they quite shut."

"Might the rites of the Temple help him find his way to his god, then?" It was a bizarre image; would Arhys walk to his own funeral, lie down on his bier?

He grimaced. "Three months seems very late. Choice is the trial of all who are trapped in time; and that choice is the last one time imposes. If his moment for decision still lingered, through some habit of the body, could your second sight tell?"

"Yes," said Ista lowly. "It can. But I want another answer. I do not like this one. I had hopes of that kiss, but it failed."

He scratched his nose in puzzlement. "You said the god spoke to you. What did He say?"

"That I was sent here, in answer to prayers, Illvin's among others, probably. The Bastard dared me, by my own son's god-neglected death, not to turn aside." She frowned fiercely in memory, and dy Cabon edged a little back from her. "I asked Him what the gods, having taken Teidez, could give me that I would trade spit for. He answered, Work. His blandishments were all decorated about with annoying endear merits that would have bought a human suitor a short trip to the nearest mud puddle by the hands of my servants. His kiss on my brow burned like a brand. His kiss on my mouth"—she hesitated, went on doggedly—"aroused me like a lover, which I most certainly am not."

Dy Cabon edged farther back, smiling in anxious placation, and made little agreeing-denying motions, his hands like flippers. "Indeed not, Royina. No one could mistake you for such."

She glowered at him, then went on. "Then He disappeared, leaving you holding the sack. So to speak. If this was prophecy, it bodes you ill, Learned."

He signed himself. "Right, right. Um. If the first kiss was a spiritual gift, so ought the second to be. Yes, I quite see that."

"Yes, but He didn't say what it was. Bastard. One of his little jokes, it seems."

Dy Cabon glanced up as if trying to decide if that were prayer or expletive, guessed correctly, and took a breath, marshaling his thoughts. "All right. But He did say. He said, Work. If it sounds like a joke, it was probably quite serious." He added more cautiously, "It seems you are made saint again, will or nil."

"Oh, I can still nil." She scowled. "That's what we all are, you know. Hybrids, of both matter and spirit. The gods' agents in the world of matter, to which they have no other entree. Doorways. He knocks on my door, demanding entry. He probes with his tongue like a lover, mimicking above what is desired below. Nothing so simple as a lover, he, yet he desires that I open myself and surrender as if to one. And let me tell you, I despise his choice of metaphors!"

Dy Cabon flippered frantically at her again. It made her want to bite him. "You are a very fortress of a woman, it is true!"

She stifled a growl, ashamed to have let her rage with his god spill over onto his humble head. "If you don't know the other half of the riddle, why were you put there?"

"Royina, I know not!" He hesitated. "Maybe we should all sleep on it." He cringed at her blistering look, and tried again. "I will endeavor to think."

"Do."

At the other end of the courtyard, Foix and Liss were now sitting closer together. Foix held Liss's hand, which she did not draw back, and spoke earnestly over it. She was listening to him, in Ista's jaundiced view, with entirely too credulous an expression on her face. Ista rose abruptly, and called her to attend. She had to call twice to summon her notice. The girl scrambled up hastily, but her smile lingered like perfume in the air.

*     *     *

LADY CATTILARA, IN SOME DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO SUSTAIN HER role of chatelaine before her new guests, held a dinner that afternoon in the same chamber where she and her ladies had entertained Ista on the second night. Arhys was again out; a very few of his officers attended, clearly more to make a convenient hasty meal than to play courtier. Cattilara had seated Foix as far from herself at the high table as she could, given his claim to Ista's side as her present guard captain. Despite the distance, it seemed to Ista that the two remained highly aware of each other throughout the strained meal. Aware, but plainly not attracted.

Learned dy Cabon, nervous, nevertheless led the prayers with admirable discretion, keeping his pleas for godly blessings safely vague. The conversations that commenced as the food was passed limped along; the divine took refuge from them in industrious chewing. He did not neglect to listen, however, Ista noted with approval.

Ista found one of Arhys's senior officers on her right hand, buffering Liss and Foix down at the end. He was polite, undaunted by her rank, but preoccupied. After a few pragmatic exchanges about the food and wine, he abruptly said to her, "My lord has told us that he is very ill. Had you heard?"

"Yes. I am aware. We have discussed it."

"Indeed, I had marked that he was pale, and not eating or sleeping well, but I had not expected ... if he is that ill, should he not be made to rest?" He glanced across at Cattilara as if considering a potential alliance against his forceful commander, for Arhys's good.

"Rest will bring no cure for what he has," said Ista.

"I fear his riding about in this weather may worsen his sickness."

"I don't see how it can."

Cattilara, on Ista's left, glowered at her.

"I did not know you for a physician, Royina." He let his tone trail off invitingly.

"I'm not. Alas."

"Quite the reverse," murmured Cattilara resentfully.

The officer blinked uncertainly, but finally mustered the perception to veer from a subject so clearly unpalatable to the marchess. "Brigands from the princedoms do not normally ride so close to Porifors, I assure you, Royina. But we chewed them well enough this morning, I think they will be discouraged from new attempts."

"They were rather more than brigands, I thought," said Ista. "Troops, or so their tabards proclaimed, though I suppose real brigands wouldn't hesitate to so disguise themselves. Has Sordso the Sot roused himself to some more military posture than heretofore, or do you think someone else in his court may be probing your defenses?"

"I should never have thought it of Sordso, but indeed, since the unfortunate death of his sister Umerue, I have heard that a great change has come over him. We shall have to find him another nickname if this keeps on."

"Oh?"

Thus encouraged, he turned eagerly to a safer court gossip than his own. "It is said that he has bestirred himself about his army, which he never did before. And given up drinking. And dismissed all his boon companions. And, quite abruptly, he has married, to an heiress of Borsasnen. And taken two official concubines as well, which the Roknari name as wives so as to avoid the stigma of bastardy there. Which he had not troubled to before, for all one hears that his advisors had long urged him to wed. He sounds quite a reformed soul. Not to mention energized, though perhaps the new wives will prove the cure for that. We rather hope this extreme virtue will not last. His poetry was not bad; it would be a shame to lose it." He grinned briefly.

Ista's brows rose. "This sounds not at all as Lord Illvin described the man, but I suppose Illvin has not had much chance to follow developments in Jokona, or indeed, anywhere else, in the past few months."

His head jerked around. "Illvin described—does he speak, now? Did he speak to you, Royina? Oh, that is hopeful news!"

Ista glanced back at Cattilara, listening with her jaw clamped shut. "He has brief periods of lucidity. I have spoken with him almost daily since I came here. There is no doubt that his wits are intact, but he remains very weak. I think he is by no means out of danger yet." She returned Cattilara's glower.

"Still—still—we feared his wits were gone for good, when he did not awaken. They were as great a loss to Porifors as Arhys's sword arm . . . would be." He caught the marchess's scowl and covered his confusion in a bite, and another.

The ordeal of dinner was not dragged out with more than a perfunctory musical interlude, to Ista's relief. Dy Cabon went to his room for some much-needed rest, and Foix accompanied Arhys's officer to see what help his little troop might lend to Porifors in exchange for their board. And, if Ista's estimation of Foix held true, to decant from the man most of the pertinent defensive information about the fortress and its denizens. Foix's next letter to Cardegoss was likely to be very informative. She wondered if he'd yet confessed his new pet to Chancellor dy Cazaril, or if that gap might be smoothly concealed in the very abundance of his tidings.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

LISS WAS BRUSHING OUT ISTA'S HAIR BEFORE BED, A TASK THE girl seemed to enjoy—Ista suspected it brought back happy memories of the stables—when a diffident knock sounded at the door of the outer chamber. Liss went to answer it and returned a moment later.

"It's one of Lord Arhys's pages. He says his lord waits below, and would beg a word with you."

Ista's brows went up. "At this hour? Very well. Tell him I will be down directly."

Liss went to convey the message, and Ista slipped out of her wrapper and back into the lavender linen shift and black silk over robe. Her hand hesitated over the mourning brooch, lying on the table, then fastened the soft black fabric beneath her breasts with it as before. Inadvertently appropriate garb, for Arhys's presence, she reflected. With Liss carrying a candle in a glass vase to light their steps, she went out on the gallery.

Lord Arhys stood at the foot of the stairs, holding a torch aloft, looking up intently. He still wore his sword and boots, as if just returned from riding out. Ista was glad to see a coat of mail beneath his gray-and-gold tabard. The night air was soft and still from the day's heat, and the flame gave a steady light, cast down over his pale features.

"Royina, I would speak with you. Apart."

Ista gestured toward the bench at the courtyard's far end, and he nodded.

"Wait here," Ista said quietly to Liss, and the girl nodded and plunked down at the top of the steps. Ista descended and paced across the pavement at Arhys's side. He handed his torch to his page, but the boy could not reach the bracket high on a carved pillar, and Arhys smiled briefly and took it back to set therein. He dismissed the page to keep Liss company. Ista and he settled themselves on either end of the stone slab, still not wholly cooled from its day's baking. The starry depths of the sky, bounded above by the roofs' rectangle, seemed to swallow the golden glow of Liss's candle and the torch, and give back nothing. Arhys's face was a gilded shadow against the deeper shadows, but his eyes gleamed.

"A busy day, your restored companions and their Jokonan tailpiece have brought us," he began. "Two of my patrols, to the south and the west, have returned with nothing to report. Two have not yet come back, and they concern me." He hesitated. "Cattilara did not greet my return. She is angry with me, I think."

"For riding out on your duties? She will surely forgive you."

"She will not forgive my dying. I am become her enemy in this, as well as her prize."

Have you, now? "She still thinks she can get you back. Or at least prevent you from going. She does not, I think, perceive the wasting effect of this delay upon you, being blinded by the surfaces of things. If she sees the disintegrating ghosts at all, I do not think she understands the nature of their damnation."

"Damnation," he breathed. "Is that what my state is. That explains much."

"Theologically, I do believe that is precisely what it is, although perhaps Learned dy Cabon could refine the term. I do not know the scholars' language, but I have seen the thing itself. You are cut off from the nourishment of matter, but blocked from the sustenance of your god.

And yet, not by your own will, as the true and mercifully sundered spirits are. By another's interference. This is ... wrong."

He stretched and clenched his hands. "It can't go on. I don't even bother to pretend to eat, now. I drink only sips. My hands and face and feet are growing numb. Just within the past ten days I've noticed it, faintly at first, but it's getting worse."

"That does not sound good," she agreed. She hesitated. "Have you prayed?"

His hand went to his left sleeve, and Ista remembered the black-and-gray prayer cord bound secretly there. "Need for the gods comes and goes in a man's life. Cattilara longed for a child, I made my obeisances . . . but if the Father of Winter ever heard me, He gave me no sign. I was never the sort to receive portents, or to delude myself that I had. Silence was always my portion, in return for my prayers. But of late it seems to me the silence has grown . . . emptier. Royina"—his gaze, sparking out of the shadows, seemed to pierce her—"how much longer do I have?"

She was about to say, I don't know. But the evasion smacked of cowardice. No Mother's physician could answer him with any better knowledge than hers. What do I know? She studied him, with both outer and inner sights. "Of ghosts, I have seen many, but more old than new. They accumulate, you see. Most still hold the form of life, of their bodies, for some two or three months after death, but drained of color, and of caring. They slowly erode. By a year after, second sight can usually no longer distinguish human features, though they still have the form of a body. By several years old, they are a white blur, then a fainter blur, then gone. But the time varies greatly, I suspect, depending on the strength of character the person had to begin with." And the stresses of their dwindling existence? Arhys was unique in her experience. The demands upon his spirit would be huge for a living man. How could his starveling desolate ghost sustain them?

The great-souled give greatly, from their abundance. But even they must come to the end of themselves, without the upholding hands of. . . Her mind shied from completing the thought. She reined it round. Their god.

"So what is my appearance now?"

"Almost wholly colorless." She added reluctantly, "You are beginning to blur about the extremities."

He rubbed his face with an exploring hand and murmured, "Ah. Much comes clear." He sat silent for a little, then tapped his knee. "You once told me you had promised Ias not to speak of my father's true fate to any living soul. Urn. Well. Here am I, before you now. Royina, I would know."

Ista was surprised into a snort. "You are a most excellent lawyer, for a dead man. This counterthrust would be a very good, sharp point, if it weren't that I'd lied to you in the first place. Ias never asked me for any such promise. He was scarcely speaking to me by then. The tale I told you was but a shield, to hide my cravenness."

"Craven is not how I'd describe you, lady."

"One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns."

"Then I ask the truth of you now, as my bier gift. More desirable to me than flowers."

"Ah." She let out her breath in a long sigh. "Yes." Her fingers traced over the smooth, cool amethysts and silver filigree of the brooch beneath her breast. Dy Lutez wore it in his hat. He wore it there on his last day, I do recall. "This will be but the third time in my life to make this confession."

"Third time pays for all, they say."

"What do they know?" She snorted again, more softly. "I think not. Still, my auditors have been of the best, as befits my rank and crime. A living saint, an honest divine, the dead man's dead son . . . so." She had told it over in her mind enough times; it needed no further rehearsal. She straightened her back, and began.

"All men know that Ias's father, Roya Fonsa, in despair at the loss of his sons and his royacy before the onslaught of the Golden General's alliance, slew his enemy by a rite of death magic, giving up his own life in the balance."

"That is history, yes."

"Fewer men know that the rite spilled a residue, a subtle curse afflicting Fonsa's heirs, and all their works. First Ias, then his son Orico. Teidez. Iselle. Orico's barren wife, Sara. And me," she breathed. "And me."

"Ias's was not noted as a fortunate reign for Chalion," he conceded warily. "Nor Orico's."

"Ias the Unlucky. Orico the Impotent. The nicknames given by the vulgar do not touch the half of it. Ias knew of his curse, knew its origin and its nature, though he did not tell even Orico until he lay on his deathbed. But he shared the knowledge with Arvol dy Lutez, his companion from boyhood, marshal, chancellor, right arm. Possibly, as Orico did later with his own favorites, Ias was trying to use Arvol as a tongs by which to handle the affairs of Chalion without spilling his evil geas upon them. Not that the ploy worked. But it suited Arvol dy Lutez's ambitions and huge energies well enough. And his arrogance. I grant, your father did love Ias in his way. Ias worshipped him, and was utterly dependent upon his judgment. Arvol even selected me for him."

Arhys pulled on his close-trimmed beard. "The rumor I have heard bruited by the envious that they were, ah, more intimate than boon companions, I take to be political slander?"

"No," she said simply. "They were lovers for years, as all Cardegoss knew but did not speak of outside the capital walls. My own mother told me, just before I wed, so I would not step into it unawares. I thought her callous, then. Now I think her wise. And worried. Looking back, I think it also was an offer to let me back out, though I missed that implication entirely at the time. Yet for all her candid warnings— which, I found later, Lord dy Lutez had insisted she give me—to prevent trouble for him, mostly, I suspect, though also for Ias—I did not understand what it meant. How could I—a romantic virgin, overwhelmed by what seemed a great victory on the field of love, to be chosen as bride by the roya himself? I nodded and agreed, anxious to seem sophisticated and sensible."

"Oh," he said, very quietly.

"So if ever you thought your mother untrue to her vows, to take Illvin's father to her bed, be assured she was not the first dy Lutez to break them. I suspect her mother was less shrewd and honest than mine, preparing her for her high marriage. Or less informed."

His brows climbed in reflection. "That accounts for ... much, that I did not understand as a boy. I thought my father had cast her off, in anger and humiliation, and that was why he never came here. I never thought that she had cast him off."

"Oh, I'm quite sure that Lord dy Lutez was thoroughly offended by her defection," Ista said. "No matter how justified. His pride would keep him from returning, but his sense of justice, to give him credit, likely also kept him from pursuing any vengeance. Or perhaps it was shame. I can hope." She added dryly, "In any case, he still had her property to add to his vast holdings, for compensation of his wounds."

He eyed her. "You thought him greedy."

"No man accumulates all that he did by chance. Yet I would not call it greed, exactly, for he scarcely knew all he held, and a greedy man numbers each coin."

"What would you call it, then?"

Ista's brows pinched in. "Consolation," she tried at last. "His possessions were a magic mirror, to reflect him the size he wished to be."

"That," he said after a moment, "is a fearsome judgment, Royina."

She bent her head in an acknowledging nod. "He was a very complex man." She drew breath, began again. "Arvol and Ias did not betray me by concealing their love. They betrayed me by concealing the curse. I entered into marriage with Ias unaware of my danger, or the danger to my children-to-be. The visions started when I became pregnant with Iselle. The gods, trying to break in upon me. I thought I was going mad. And Ias and dy Lutez let me go on thinking that. For two years."

He jerked a little at the sudden fierceness in her voice. "That seems . . . most unkind."

"That was cowardice. And contempt for my wits and spine. They mired me in the consequences of their secret, then refused to trust me with its cause. I was a mere girl, you see, unfit to bear such a burden. Though not unfit to bear Ias's children into that darkness. Except the gods did not seem to regard me as unfit. For it was me They came to. Not Ias. Not dy Lutez. Me."

Her lips twisted. "I wonder—in retrospect—how put out Arvol was by that? He would have been the sole shining hero to save Ias, if he could. It was his accustomed role. And indeed, for a while it did appear that the gods had assigned it to him.

"At last—do even the gods grow impatient with our obtuseness?— the Mother of Summer Herself appeared to me, not in dream but in waking vision. I was prostrated—I had not yet learned to be suspicious of the gods. She told me that the curse might be broken and carried out of the world by a man who would lay down his life three times for the blighted House of Chalion. Being young, and frenzied with anxiety for my babies, I took Her words too literally, and concluded that She meant me to devise a perilous rite to accomplish this paradox."

"Perilous indeed. And, um . . ." His brow wrinkled. "Paradoxical."

"I told all to Ias and Arvol, and we took counsel together. Arvol, afflicted by our weeping, volunteered to attempt the hero's role. We hit upon drowning as the method, for men were known to come back from that death, sometimes. And it does not disfigure. Arvol studied it, collected tales, investigated victims both lost and saved. In a cavern beneath the Zangre, we set up the cask, the ropes, the winch. The altars to all the gods. Arvol let himself be stripped, bound, lowered upside down, until his struggles ceased, until the light of his soul went out to my inner eye."

He began to speak; she held up her hand, to block the misunderstanding. "No. Not yet. We drew him out—pressed the water from his throat, pounded on his heart, cried out our prayers, until he choked and breathed again. And I could see the crack in the curse.

"We had planned the ritual three nights in succession. On the second night, all went the same, until his hair brushed the surface of the water, and he gasped out to stop, he could not bear it. He cried I was trying to assassinate him, for jealousy's sake. Ias hesitated. I was shaken, sick in my stomach—but I let reason compel me. It was Arvol's own chosen method, it had worked once ... I wailed for fear for my children, and for the frustration of coming so close, to miss saving them by a handbreadth. For rage at his slander. And for raising my hopes so high upon his pride, then dashing them so low upon his frailty." She added simply, "I'd believed in his account of himself, you see."

In the night, in some hollow below the castle walls, insects sang, a thin, high keening. It was the only sound. Arhys had forgotten to breathe. His body, perhaps, was losing the habit. She wondered how long it would take him to notice.

"When we drew him out the second time, he was dead indeed, and not all our tears and prayers, regrets and recriminations, and oh, there were many of those last, brought him back again. Ias half decided, later, that Arvol's accusation of jealousy was true; half the time, I agreed myself. The fault was . . . Ias's, for weakness, and mine, for impatience and unwisdom. For if Ias had stood against me, I would have yielded, or if I had listened to my heart and not my head, and allowed Arvol more time, who is to say that after another day, or week, or month, he might have recovered his nerve? I'll never know, now. The gods forsook me. The curse remained, unbroken, worse in its effects than ever. Until another generation threw up another man, more fitted to lift it from the world." She drew breath. "And that is how I came to murder your father. If you really want to know."

He was silent for a long time, remembered to inhale, and said, "Lady, I think this is not a confession. This is an indictment."

She rocked back. "Of Arvol? Yes," she said slowly, "that, too. If he had never volunteered, I'd have thought no less of him. If he had died on the first attempt, well, I would have thought the task beyond any man, or my design mistaken. But to demonstrate the true possibility, and then fail . . . shattered my heart. It was not, I came later to learn, death by rote that the gods required. One cannot force another's soul to grow wide enough to admit a god to the world, but that dilation, not the mere dying, was what was wanted. Arvol dy Lutez was a great man. But. . . not quite great enough."

He stared into the darkness. The torch had almost burned out, though at the top of the stairs Liss's candle still glowed. She sat with her chin propped in her hands, eyelids drooping; the page had fallen asleep, curled up against her skirts.

"If my father had lived," he said at last, "do you think he would ever have called me to his side?"

"If he had wrenched open his soul wide enough to succeed, I think it would thereafter have been more than wide enough to encompass you. Those who have admitted a god do not shrink back to their former size, in my experience. If he had never made the attempt. . . well, he was never quite small enough to turn aside from hazard, either. So, I do not know."

"Mm." It was a little noise, but contained a cache of pain nonetheless. He glanced up at the sky, reading the clock of the stars. "Royina, I keep you from your bed."

But not the reverse. In the long, lonely watches of his unsleeping nights, what did he now think about? She took the hint nonetheless and rose. He stood with her, his war gear creaking.

He took her hand, half bowed, briefly pressed his cool forehead against its back. "Royina, I do thank you for these garlands of truth. I know they cost you dear."

"They are dry and bitter thorns. I wish I could give you some better bier gift." With all my cracking heart, I do wish it.

"I do not desire any softer wreath."

Liss, seeing them pace once more across the court, prodded the page awake and came to the foot of the stairs to receive Ista back from Arhys's arm. Arhys saluted them solemnly and turned away, his sleepy page pattering after. The echoes of his receding footfalls in the archway sounded like muffled drums in Ista's ears.

*     *     *

IT WAS LONG BEFORE ISTA SLEPT. IN THE GRAY OF DAWN, SHE SEEMED to hear thumping and low voices in the distance, but her exhaustion drew her back down into her pillow. She fell into an evil dream where she sat at a high table with Lady Cattilara. The marchess, glowing faintly violet, plied her guest with food until Ista's belly strained, and drowned her wits in drink until Ista lay back in her chair unable to rise for the paralysis in her limbs.

Only a much louder thumping at the door to the outer chamber roused her from this bizarre dream imprisonment. She exhaled in relief to find herself in her own bed, her body normally proportioned and mobile again, if feeling anything but well rested. By the bright lines seeping through her shutters, it was broad day.

Liss's steps sounded, then voices: Foix's, deep and urgent, dy Cabon's, sharp and excited. Ista had already swung out of bed and pulled her black robe about herself when the door between the chambers opened and Liss poked her head in.

"Royina, something very strange has happened ..."

Ista pushed past her. Foix was dressed for the day in blue tunic, trousers, boots and sword, his face flushed with exertion; dy Cabon's white under tunic was on askew, its front buttons mismatched with their buttonholes, his feet yet bare.

"Royina." Foix ducked his head. "Did you see or hear anything, at Lord Illvin's chambers or on the gallery, along about dawn? Your room is closer than ours."

"No—maybe. I fell back to sleep." She grimaced in memory of the unpleasant dream. "I was very tired. Was there something?"

"Lady Cattilara came at dawn with some servants and carried off Lord Illvin on a pallet. To take him down to the temple to pray over, and consult with the temple physicians, she said."

"The temple physicians should come up to attend upon him in Porifors, I would think," said Ista, disturbed. "Did Lord Arhys go with them?"

"The march is nowhere to be found this morning. I first learned of all this when one of his officers asked me if I'd seen him."

"I last saw Arhys last night. He came to speak with me down in the courtyard, around midnight. Liss was there."

The girl nodded. She had evidently wakened before Ista—she was dressed and had a tray with morning tea and fresh bread sitting ready on a table—but not much before, for this all seemed news to her as well.

"Well," Foix continued, "I felt strangely uneasy—probably left over from the bad dreams I'd had last night, which really made me wonder about the castle food, but anyway, I made an excuse to walk down to the temple to see what was happening. Lady Cattilara had never come there. I asked around. I finally discovered that she had commandeered a supply wagon and a team of dray horses from the garrison's stable down there. No one knew what had been loaded aboard, but the wagon, with Goram driving and one of the servants sitting beside him, was seen leaving the town gate at least an hour ago, on the road south."

Ista's breath drew in. "Has she or Arhys been seen since?"

"No, Royina."

"Then she has stolen them away. Taken Arhys, and abducted Illvin to maintain him."

Foix's gaze upon her sharpened. "This is the marchess's doing, do you think? Not Lord Arhys's?"

"Lord Arhys would never abandon Porifors and his post. Not for all his wife's weeping," said Ista with certainty. Being a stronger-minded man than Las. But then, a dy Lutez always was.

"But her demon wanted to flee, you told us," said dy Cabon. "Suppose it has gained the upper hand?"

"Then why take the baggage?" asked Liss logically. "Lady Cattilara's body and her jewel case, and one fast horse, would serve it better."

Foix eyed her with a flash of respect.

"Not, I think, the upper hand," said Ista slowly. "But suppose her demon had persuaded her that both their goals could be better served by flight? She would have all its cooperation, then."

"She desires her husband's life restored, or at least, his strange half death continued indefinitely," said Foix. "How is that served by heaving him and poor Lord Illvin into a wagon and driving off?"

"Er," said dy Cabon.

All the faces in the room turned toward him. "What?" said Ista sharply.

"Ah, um . . . I'm wondering if something I might have said . . . Lady Cattilara came to me last evening after dinner. For spiritual guidance, I thought. We talked about this dire knot. Poor chick, her tears glittered down like little jewels of sorrow across her cheeks."

Ista rolled her eyes. "No doubt. And then?"

"I tried to counsel as well as console, to bring her to some sense of what a theological danger she had placed her husband in. As well as the physical danger inflicted upon his brother, and her own soul's peril. I said, more demon magic was no cure. Nothing but a miracle could alter the inevitable course of events. She asked me, where were miracles to be had, for all the world as if they came from some holy emporium. I said, only saints could channel them to us from the gods. She asked, where were saints to be found? I said, all sorts of strange and unexpected places, both high and low. I said, I thought you, Royina, were the saint into whose hands this tangle had been given for unraveling. She said, um, well, some wild and unconsidered things—she seems to think you are her enemy. I assured her that could not be so. She suggested any other saint in the world would be better suited for the task, and asked me to send for one, as though saints were physicians, to be obtained from the Temple by draft. Well, some saints are physicians, but it's not like ... I suggested that she wasn't likely to get any other answer from the gods; most people don't even get one. I'm afraid she is not very interested in the subtler truths of theology."

"She wants a rite by rote," said Ista. As I did, once. "A merchant's bargain. Pay the coin, get the goods. She just can't find the peddler."

He shrugged. "I fear it is so."

"So now she has taken her quick and her dead and gone on pilgrimage. To look for a miracle. To order."

"The roads here are very unsafe, as we found yesterday," said Foix in a voice of worry. "Lord Arhys would surely not permit his wife to go out on them now, no matter what her hope."

"Do you think he had a choice? Is there one pallet in that wagon, or two—the brothers lying side by side like bundles of cordwood? The demon could help her to it—the dual inactivity would likely be a relief to it."

Dy Cabon scratched his head. "She has a better right to seek healing for Lord Arhys than any other person. He is her husband."

"Illvin isn't," said Ista shortly. "And what Arhys needs goes beyond healing. They must be brought back. Foix, muster your troop and their horses. Liss, wrap my knees for riding, I don't want to tear open these scabs."

Dy Cabon said, "Royina, you should not be out on the road either!"

"I agree with you, but Foix has not the authority to command Cattilara's servants against her own wishes. And someone must handle her demon."

"I think I might do that, Royina," said Foix. He glanced warily at dy Cabon.

"Can you, simultaneously, handle a screaming, weeping, distraught woman?"

"Ah," he said, contemplating this unpalatable vision. "Can you?"

"I think so." In fact, I think I'm looking forward to it.

"I would, urn, appreciate that, Royina."

"Good. Warn Arhys's officers ... hm." Her eyes narrowed. "I suspect Arhys would not want this tale bruited about. Dy Cabon. If we're not back in—how long, Foix? Two hours?"

"They had four horses hitched, and an hour's start—two or three hours."

"If we're not back in three hours, tell Arhys's senior officers what we have done, and have them send men after us." Ista turned to Foix. "Hurry. We'll meet you in the forecourt as soon as the horses are saddled."

He saluted her and was gone. Liss was already stripping out of her fine dress and kicking off her slippers. Ista pushed the protesting dy Cabon out the door.

"But I should ride with you, Royina!" cried the divine. "And Foix should not be left unguided!"

"No. I need you here. And if Foix's dancing bear requires a collar, I am better fitted to supply it."

"And you're too fat and you ride too slow," Liss's unsympathetic voice floated through the window, accompanied by a thump of boots being lined up.

Dy Cabon reddened.

Ista rested her hand on his shoulder. "This is a dry country, and culverts are hard to come by. You will be one less terror for my heart to worry about, safe in here."

His color deepened, but he bowed in unhappy obedience nonetheless. Ista shut the door on him and hurried to don her riding clothes.