Lois Bujold - The Curse of Chalion

Cazaril fought in an exaltation of terror, so hard-pressed to defend himself that the supernatural dangers of a successful thrust of his own, of the death demon tearing his soul out of his body along with his dying victim's, scarcely seemed to apply. Cazaril's world narrowed; he no longer sought to win the day, or this fight, or his life, but merely another stride. Each stride a little victory. Sixty... something... he was losing count. Begin again. One. Two. Three...

I am probably going to die now. Twice was no charm. He howled inside with the waste of it, mad with regret that he could not die enough . His arm was shaking with fatigue. This gate wanted a swordsman, not a secretary, but the royesse's private holy vigil had included only the few nobles. Was no one coming up behind him in support? Surely even the old servants could grab something and throw it... Twenty-two...

Could he fall back across the courtyard to the stairs? Was the royal party gone up the stairs yet? He threw a frantic glance backward, a mistake, for he lost his rhythm; with a scree of metal, the captain's sword snaked his from his tingling grip. His blade clattered across the stone, spinning. The Baocian bore Cazaril violently backward through the archway and knocked him to the pavement. Half a dozen attackers surged through the gate after the captain and spread out across the courtyard; a couple of them, prudent and experienced, kicked him in passing to keep him down. He still didn't know who they were, but he had no doubt whose they were.

Coughing, he rolled on his side in time to see dy Jironal, swearing, stride through the gate in the wake of another half dozen men. Dy Cembuer was still down, bent in on himself, teeth clenched in agony. Were Iselle and Bergon safe away? Down a servants' stair, over the roof tiles? Pray the gods they had not panicked and barricaded themselves in their chambers... Dy Jironal headed toward the stairs to the gallery, where a little knot of his men waited to make a concerted rush.

"Martou!" Cazaril bellowed, wrenching over and up onto his knees.

Dy Jironal swung round as though spun on the end of a rope. "You!" At his motion, the Baocian guard captain and another soldier grasped Cazaril by the arms, bending them up behind him, and dragged him to his feet.

"You are too late!" Cazaril called. "She's wed and bedded, and there's no way you can undo it now. Chalion owns Ibra at the fairest price ever paid, and all the country celebrates its good fortune. She is the Child of Spring and the delight of the gods. You can't win against her. Give over! Save your life, and the lives of your men."

"Wed?" snarled dy Jironal. "Widowed, if needs be. She is a mad traitor and the whore of Ibra and accursed, and I'll not have it!" He whirled again toward the stairs.

"You're the whore, Martou! You sold Gotorget for Roknari money that I refused, and you sold me to the galleys to stop my mouth!" Cazaril glared around frantically at the hesitating troop. Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven... "This liar sells his own men. Follow him, and you risk betrayal the first moment he smells profit!"

Dy Jironal turned again, drawing his sword. "I'll stop your mouth, you miserable fool! Hold him up ."

Wait, no—

The two men holding Cazaril jerked a little apart, their eyes widening, as dy Jironal began to stride forward, twisting for a mighty two-handed swing. "My lord, it's murder," faltered the man holding Cazaril's left arm. The beheading arc was blocked by Cazaril's captors, and dy Jironal changed in mid-career to a violent low thrust, lunging forward with all the weight of his fury behind his arm.

The steel pierced silk brocade and skin and muscle and drove through Cazaril's gut, and Cazaril was nearly jerked off his feet with the force of it.

Sound ceased. The sword was sliding through him as slowly as a pearl dropped in honey, and as painlessly. Dy Jironal's red face was frozen in a rictus of rage. On either side of Cazaril, his captors bent and leaned away, mouths creeping open on startled cries that never emerged.

With a yowl of triumph that only Cazaril heard, the death demon coursed up the sword blade, leaving it red-hot in its wake, and into dy Jironal's hand. With a scream of anguish, a black syrup that was Dondo poured after. Crackling blue-white sparks grew around dy Jironal's sword arm like ivy twining, and then spiraled around his whole body. Slowly, dy Jironal's head tilted back, and white fire came from his mouth as his soul was uprooted from him. His hair stood on end, and his eyes widened and boiled white. The driven sword still moved with his falling weight, and Cazaril's flesh sizzled around it. White and black and red whirled together, braided round each other, and flowed away in no direction. Cazaril's perception was drawn into the twisting cyclone's wake, up out of his body like a rising column of smoke. Three deaths and a demon all bound together. They flowed into a blue Presence...

Cazaril's mind exploded.

He opened outward, and outward, and outward still, till all the world lay below him as if seen from a high mountain. But not the realm of matter. This was a landscape of soul-stuff; colors he could not name, of a shattering brilliance, bore him up upon a glorious turbulence. He could hear all the minds of the world whispering, a sighing like wind in a forest—if one could but distinguish, simultaneously and separately, the song of each leaf. And all the world's cries of pain and woe. And shame and joy. And hope and despair and aspiration... A thousand thousand moments from a thousand thousand lives poured through his distending spirit.

From the surface below him, little bubbles of soul-color were boiling up one by one and floating into a turning dance, hundreds, thousands, like great raindrops falling upward... It is the dying, pouring in through the rents of the worlds into this place. Souls gestated by matter in the world, dying into this strange new birth. Too much, too much, too much... His mind could not hold it all, and the visions burst from him like water falling through his fingers.

He'd once thought of the Lady of Spring as a sort of pleasant, gentle young woman, in his vague and youthful conceptualizations. The divines and Ordol had honed it scarcely further than to a mental picture of a nice immortal lady. This overwhelming Mind listened to every cry or song in the world at once. She watched the souls spiral up in all their terrible complex beauty with the delight of a gardener inhaling the scent of Her flowers. And now this Mind turned Her attention fully upon Cazaril.

Cazaril melted, and was cupped in Her hands. He thought She drank him, siphoning him out of the violent concatenation of the dy Jironal brothers and the demon, who shot away elsewhere . He was blown from Her lips again, back down in a tightening spiral through the great slash in the world that was his death, and once again into his body. Dy Jironal's sword blade was just emerging from his back. Blood bloomed around the metal point like a rose.

And now to work , the Lady whispered. Open to me, sweet Cazaril .

Can I watch? he asked tremulously.

Whatever you can bear, is permitted.

He sank back in a languid ease, as the goddess flowed through him into the world. His lips curved up in a smile, or started to; his fleshly body was as sluggish as those of the men around him in the courtyard. He seemed to be sinking to his knees. Dy Jironal's corpse had not yet finished falling to the pavement, although his dead hand had spasmed from his sword hilt. Dy Cembuer was lifting himself upon his good arm, his mouth opening upon a cry that was going to eventually become, Cazaril! Some men were throwing themselves prone. Some were starting to run.