Paladin of Souls (58 page)

"This task ... is now done, yes?" he said hopefully. Or, possibly, worriedly. He glanced around the shambles of Porifors. "Yesterday, right?"

"No, I expect it is only beginning. In the past three years Joen released a very plague of elementals. They have escaped all over the Five Princedoms and the royacies, though their greatest concentration is likely still in Jokona. The woman who had this calling before me was killed in Rauma. It is not an easy, not an easy . . . duty to train for. If I read the god aright—He delights in obscurity and riddles—I think He wanted a successor who would be rather better guarded, through what promises to be a, ah, theologically difficult period."

Illvin's eyes glinted, listening to this. He murmured, "Much becomes clear."

"He told me He did not want to train another porter," Ista added, "and that He fancied a royina for a time. His exact words." She let her slight pause emphasize this last. "I am called. I come."
And you may either help, brother, or get out of my way.
"I expect to form a traveling court, small and adaptable; the god's duties are likely to continue physically wearing. My clerk—as soon as I appoint one—and yours must deal shortly with forwarding my dower income, as I doubt my tasks will take me back to Valenda."

Dy Baocia digested it all for a moment, then cleared his throat and said cautiously, "My men are setting up our camp by the spring to the east of the castle; will you take your ease there, Ista, or return to your rooms in here?"

Ista glanced up at Illvin. "That will be for Porifors's chatelaine to decide. But until this fortress has had more time to recover, I would not burden it with my expanded household. I will rest in your camp for a while."

Illvin gave her a short nod in appreciation of her delicacy, and all that went unspoken in it:
until after the dead are buried.

Her brother offered to escort her to his tents, as he was going in that direction, and Illvin gave her a formal bow of temporary farewell.

"My duties today are relentless," Illvin murmured, "but later I must discuss with you the matter of an appropriate guard company for this traveling court of yours."

"Indeed," she returned. "And other appointments as well."

"And callings."

"Those, too."

*     *     *

PEJAR AND HIS TWO SLAIN COMRADES OF THE DAUGHTER'S ORDER were buried outside the walls of Porifors that afternoon. Ista and all her company attended upon them. Learned dy Cabon had come to Ista in distress, earlier, for while he might officiate—none better, in Ista's view—he had no sacred animals to sign the gods' acceptances; those belonging to Porifors's own temple were overburdened and reported close to frenzied with the day's demands.

"Learned," she had chided him gently. "We do not need the animals. We have me."

"Ah," he said, rocking back. "Oh. As you are made saint again—of course."

She knelt, now, in the sunlight by each wrapped form in turn, laid her hand upon its brow, and prayed for their signs. In rites at major temples like the one in Cardegoss, each order proffered a sacred animal, appropriate in color and sex to the god or goddess it represented, with an acolyte-groom to handle it. The creatures were led in turn to the bier, and by their behavior the divines interpreted to the mourners which god had taken in their lost one's soul, and therefore where to direct their prayers—and, not incidentally, upon which order's altar to lay their more material offerings. The rite brought consolation to the living, support to the Temple, and occasionally some surprises.

She had often wondered what the animals trained to this duty felt. She was relieved when she experienced no holy hallucinations: merely a silent certainty. Pejar and the first of his comrades were taken up by the Daughter of Spring, Whom they had served so faithfully, she felt at once, and so she reported. The last man, she discovered, was different.

"Curious," she said to Ferda and Foix. "The Father of Winter has taken Laonin. I wonder if it is for the sake of his courage on Arhys's ride—or if he has a child somewhere? He was not married, was he?"

"Urn, no," said Ferda. He glanced at dy Cabon's whites and swallowed whatever embarrassment he might have felt on the dead dedicat's behalf.

Ista rose from the graveside. "Then I charge you to find out, and see that the child, if it lives, is cared for. I will write to Holy General dy Yarrin as well. It shall have a purse from me to maintain its infancy, and a claim on a place in my household when it comes of age, if it desires."

"Yes, Royina," said Ferda. Surreptitiously, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

Ista nodded satisfaction. As a conscientious officer, he would not fail in this task, she was sure.

The shaded grove reserved for the castle's dead overlooked the pleasant river; many graves were still being dug, and other grieving people, comrades and relatives of the slain, had watched their company's rites. What rumors were circulating about her in Porifors Ista hardly knew, but within the hour humble petitioners had descended upon dy Cabon to beg the royal saint's indulgence for their dead.

As a result Ista spent the day until darkness fell being conducted by dy Cabon and Liss from graveside to graveside, reporting the fates of souls. There were too many, but the task was not so endless as the devastation Joen's sorcerers would have left across Chalion if not stopped by Porifors's sacrifices. Ista refused none who asked her aid, for most surely, these had not refused her. Every mourner seemed to have some story to tell her of their dead; not, she realized at length, in the expectation that she would do anything, except listen. Attend.
Royina, see this man; make him real in your mind, as in ours; for in the realm of matter, he lives now only in our memories.
She listened till her ears and heart both ached.

Returning to her brother's tents after nightfall, she fell onto her cot like a corpse herself. As the night drew on, she told over the names, faces, fragments of men's lives in her thoughts. How could the gods' minds hold all these tales in full?
For They remember us perfectly.

At length, exhausted, she rolled over and slept.

ARHYS'S FUNERAL TOOK PLACE THE NEXT MORNING IN THE little temple in the town of Porifors, as if an ordinary border lord had died in an ordinary battle. The provincar of Caribastos had ridden in with a troop too late to bear arms, but in time to help bear up the sealed coffin, together with dy Oby, dy Baocia, Illvin, Foix, and one of Arhys's senior officers. It was as honorable an escort as might be had.

The sacred animal of the Father of Winter here was a fine old gray deerhound, his coat brushed to a silvery sheen for the occasion; he sat at once by the bier when his acolyte-groom led him up, and would not be moved from his guard-place thereafter. The normally articulate Illvin was pallid and close-throated. He managed only a simple
He was a great-souled man,
in a voice that slid, then stepped back to Ista's side. It was plain that any further demand for speech would have cracked him. To spare him, dy Oby and dy Caribastos stepped forward to deliver all the proper orations, listing their late relative's and liegeman's public achievements.

Lady Cattilara, too, was pale and quiet. She did not speak much to Illvin, or vice versa, just the necessary practical exchanges. There would never be friendship between them, exactly; but the blood they'd mingled on the tower, Ista judged, had bought them enough mutual respect to survive upon. Cattilara, jaw tight, even managed a polite nod to Ista. For the three of them, the morning's rite was a redundant farewell, more a social burden to be endured than an hour of parting. After the interment and the funeral meal, the military men dragged Illvin off for conclave. Lady Cattilara made scant work of packing, left her ladies to deal with the rest, and rode out under the escort of one of her brothers, bound for Oby. It would be after nightfall before she reached it; but Ista, remembering her own horror of the Zangre after Ias's death, had no trouble understanding Cattilara's desire not to sleep another night in her emptied marriage bed. Cattilara bore away great grief in her heart, down that eastern road, but not, Ista thought, a crippling burden of hatred, rage, or guilt along with it. What would eventually grow to fill that emptiness, Ista did not know—but she felt that it would not be stunted.

*     *     *

EARLY THE NEXT AFTERNOON, LORD ILLVIN CAME TO ISTA IN DY Baocia’s camp. They climbed the path above the spring, partly for the view, which took in both Castle Porifors and the valley it guarded, partly to shed any of Ista's would-be attendants less athletic than Liss. Illvin gallantly spread his vest-cloak upon a rock for Ista to seat herself. Liss wandered nearby, looking longingly at an enticing cork-oak tree that her dress prevented her from climbing.

Ista nodded to Illvin's belt, where both Arhys's and Cattilara's keys now hung. "Provincar dy Caribastos has confirmed your command of Porifors, I see."

"For the moment, at least," said Illvin.

"For the moment?"

He stared thoughtfully along the ridge to where the stronghold's walls rose from the rocks. "It's odd. I was born in Porifors—lived here almost all of my life—yet I've never owned it, nor expected to. It belongs today to my niece Liviana—a nine-year-old girl who lives half a province away. Yet it is my home, if anyplace is. I own half a dozen little estates in Caribastos, unentailed scatterings from my mother—but they are mere possessions, barely visited. Still, necessarily, Porifors must be defended."

"By you—necessarily?"

He shrugged. "It is the key fortress, along this border."

"I think this border may be about to shift."

He grinned briefly. "Indeed. Things are stirring, in our counsels. I'm stirring 'em. I don't need Arhys's gifts to tell that this is a boon of timing and chance not to be wasted."

"I trust so. I expect Marshal dy Palliar and Chancellor dy Cazaril to ride into the gates of Porifors within the week. If my brother's and dy Caribastos's and Foix's letters"—
and mine
—"do not fetch them, they are not the men I take them for."

"Will they see it, do you think? Here, now, is the moment to turn Joen's strategy about—to sweep down, all unexpected, into Jokona while it is so disrupted, and turn Visping's flank—and the campaign could be done before it was even expected to start."

"It does not take second sight to foresee that outcome," said Ista. "If it works, dy Palliar will doubtless be showered with the acclaim for his grand strategy."

Illvin smiled grimly. "Poor Joen, she even loses that credit. She should have been a general."

"Anything but the frustrated puppeteer she was constrained to be," Ista agreed. "What will become of Sordso? I think he is not quite mad, for all that he sniveled and kissed my skirt hem when I passed him in the forecourt yesterday. His soul is his own now, though it will be long before his nerves are anything but shattered."

"Yes, one scarcely knows if he would be of more use to us as a hostage, or set loose to be a very bad enemy leader."

"He spoke of a religious vocation, and conversion to the Quintarian faith, actually. I've no idea how long the fit will last."

Illvin snorted. "Perhaps his poetry will grow better hereafter."

"I shouldn't be surprised." The castle's battlements stood stark and pale in the bright light, concealing the damage being repaired within; Ista could hear a faint echo of hammering. "By the time Liviana's future husband succeeds to the command of Porifors, it will have become a quiet backwater, like Valenda. This place has earned its peace, I think." She glanced at Illvin, who was smiling down at her. "There are two thoughts in my mind just now."

"Only two?"

"Two thousand, but these are uppermost. One is that my roving court needs a royal seneschal: a competent and experienced officer, preferably one who knows this area, to direct my travels and secure my person."

His brows twitched up, encouragingly.

"The other is that Marshal dy Palliar will need an experienced intelligencer, an officer who knows Jokona and the Jokonans better than any other, who speaks and writes both court and vile Roknari, possessing trunks full of maps and charts and ground plans, to advise his strategies in this region. I greatly fear that these are two mutually exclusive posts."

He touched one finger thoughtfully to his lips. "I might mention, it has occurred independently to several military minds here that any army presently wishing to march north would be very, very happy to possess a cure for sorcerers, to carry close at hand. Should any further enemy sorcerers be encountered on this campaign. Resources devoted to the protection of such a sorceress-saint would not be considered wasted. So the saint's seneschal and the marshal's intelligencer might not find themselves working so far apart as all that."

Ista's brows rose. "Hm? Perhaps ... If it is clearly understood that the saint serves not Chalion, not even the Temple, but the god, and must go as the god directs. Alongside the marshal's tents for a time, but not in them. Well, well, dy Cazaril will understand that part; and I think he could drill it into dy Palliar's head if anyone could."

He stared thoughtfully up the valley road. "A week, you think, till they arrive?"

"Ten days at most."

"Huh." His long fingers rattled the keys at his belt. "Meantime ... I actually walked over here to invite you to take rooms within Castle Porifors again, now we are in slightly better order. If you wish. The weather's due to change, judging by the wind; we may have a bit of welcome rain by tomorrow night."

"Not Umerue's old chamber, I trust."

"No, we've lodged Prince Sordso and his watchers there."

"Nor Cattilara's."

"Dy Caribastos and his retinue have taken over that whole gallery." He cleared his throat. "I was thinking of the ones you had before. Across from mine. Although ... I fear there is not enough space to also house all of your ladies."

Ista managed not to grin, or at least not too broadly. "Thank you, Lord Illvin; I should be pleased."