Lois Bujold - The Curse of Chalion

The goddess drew the curse of Chalion like thick black wool into Her hands. Lifting it from Iselle and Bergon, somewhere in the streets of Taryoon. From Ista in Valenda. From Sara in Cardegoss. From all the land of Chalion, mountain to mountain, river to plain. Cazaril could not sense Orico in the dark fog. The Lady spun it out again through Cazaril. As it twisted through him into the other realm, its darkness fell away, and then he wasn't sure if it was a thread or a stream of bright clean water, or wine, or something even more wonderful.

Another Presence, solemn and gray, waited there, and took it up. And took it in. And sighed in something like relief, or completion, or balance. I think it was the blood of a god. Spilled, soiled, drawn up again, cleaned, and returned at last...

I don't understand. Was Ista mistaken? Did I miscount my deaths?

The goddess laughed. Think it through...

Then the vast blue Presence poured out of the world through him like a river thundering over a waterfall. The beauty of a triumphal music he knew he would never quite remember, till he came to Her realm again, cracked his heart. The great rent drew closed. Healed. Sealed.

And, abruptly as that, it all was gone.

THE CRACK OF THE STONE PAVEMENT HITTING HIS knees was his first returning sensation. Desperately, he held himself upright, sitting on his heels, so as not to wrench the sword blade around in his flesh. The hilt and a handspan of bright blade hung below his downward-turning gaze, driven at a crooked upward angle into his stomach just below and to the left of his navel. The point seemed to come out somewhere to the right of his spine, and higher. Now came the pain. As he drew his first shuddering breath, the weapon bobbed a trifle. The stink of cauterized flesh assailed his nostrils, mixed with a celestial perfume like spring flowers. He trembled with shock and cold. He tried to hold very still.

He had a distressing urge to giggle. That would hurt. More...

Not all the scorched-meat smell was from him. Dy Jironal lay before him. Cazaril had seen corpses burned from the outside in—never before from the inside out. The chancellor's hair and clothes smoked a little, but then went out without catching to flame.

Cazaril's attention was arrested by a pebble that lay on the pavement near his knee. It was so dense . So persistent. The gods could not lift so much as a feather, but he, a mere human, might pick up this ancient unchanging object and place it wherever he wished, even into his pocket. He wondered why he had never appreciated the stubborn fidelity of matter. A dried leaf lay nearby, even more stunning in its complexity. Matter invented so many forms , and then went on to generate beauty beyond itself, minds and souls rising up out of it like melody from an instrument... matter was an amazement to the gods. Matter remembered itself so very clearly. He could not think why he had failed to notice it before. His own shaking hand was a miracle, as was the fine metal sword in his belly, and the orange trees in the tubs—one was tipped over now, wonderfully fractured and spilling—and the tubs, and the birdsong starting in the morning, and the water—water! Five gods, water!—in the fountain, and the morning light filtering into the sky...

"Lord Cazaril?" came a faint voice from his elbow.

He glanced aside to find that dy Cembuer had crept up to him.

" What was that? " Dy Cembuer sounded very close to tears.

"Some miracles." Too many in one place at one time. He was overwhelmed with miracles. They filled his eyes in every direction.

Speaking was a mistake, for the vibration stirred the pain in his gut. Though he could speak; the sword did not appear to have pierced his lung. He imagined how much it would hurt to cough blood, just now. Gut wound, then. I will be dead again in three days. He could smell a faint scent of shit, mixed with the scorched meat and the goddess's perfume. And sobbing... no, wait, the deadly fecal smell was not coming from him, yet. The Baocian captain was curled up in a tight ball on his side a little way off, his arms locked around his head, weeping. He did not seem to have any wound. Ah. Yes. He had been the nearest living witness. The goddess must have brushed against him, in Her passage.

Cazaril risked another breath. "What did you see?" he asked dy Cembuer.

"That man—was that dy Jironal?"

Cazaril nodded, a tiny careful nod.

"When he stabbed you, there was a hellish crack, and he burst into blue fire. He is... what did... did the gods strike him down?"

"Not exactly. It was... a little more complicated than that..." It seemed strangely quiet in the courtyard. Cazaril risked turning his head. About half of the bravos, and a few servants of Iselle's household, were laid flat on the ground. Some were mumbling rapidly under their breaths; others were crying like the Baocian captain. The rest had vanished.

Cazaril thought he could see now why a man had to lay down his life three times to do this. And here he'd imagined the gods were being arbitrary and difficult for the sake of some arcane punishment. He'd needed the first two deaths just for the practice . The first, to learn how to accept death in the body—his flogging on the galley, that had been. He had not miscounted—that death had not been for the House of Chalion at the time. But it had become so, with Iselle's marriage to Bergon and its consummation; the joining of two into one, that had shared the curse so horrifyingly between them, had apparently also portioned out this sacrifice. Bergon's secret dowry, eh. Cazaril hoped he might live long enough to tell him, and that the royse would be pleased. His second acceptance, of death of the soul, had been in the lonely company of crows in Fonsa's tower. So that when he came at last to this one, he could offer the goddess a smooth and steady partnering... humbling parallels involving the training of mules offered themselves to his mind.

Footsteps sounded. Cazaril glanced up to see dy Tagille, winded and disheveled but with his sword sheathed, running into the courtyard. He dashed up to them and stopped abruptly. "Bastard's hell." He glanced aside at his Ibran comrade. "Are you all right, dy Cembuer?"

"Sons of bitches broke my arm again. He's the scary one. What's happening out there?"

"Dy Baocia rallied his men, and has driven the invaders out of the palace. It's all very confused right now, but the rest of them seem to be running through town trying to get to the temple."

"To assail it?" dy Cembuer asked in alarm. He tried to struggle to his feet again.

"No. To surrender to armed men who will not try to tear them limb from limb. It seems every citizen of Taryoon has taken to the streets after them. The women are the worst. Bastard's hell," he repeated, staring at dy Jironal's smoking corpse, "some Chalionese soldier was screaming and babbling that he'd seen dy Jironal struck by lightning from a clear blue sky for the sacrilege of offering battle on the Daughter's Day. And I scarcely believed him."

"I saw it, too," said dy Cembuer. "There was a horrible noise. He didn't even have time to cry out."

Dy Tagille dragged the corpse a little way off and knelt in front of Cazaril, staring fearfully at his skewered stomach and then into his face. "Lord Cazaril, we must try to draw this sword from you. Best we do it at once."

"No... wait..." Cazaril had once seen a man plugged with a crossbow bolt live for half an hour, until the bolt was drawn out; his blood had gushed forth then, and he'd died. "I want to see Lady Betriz first."

"My lord, you cannot sit there with a sword stuck through you!"

"Well," said Cazaril reasonably, "I surely cannot move ..." Trying to talk made him pant. Not good. He was shivering and very cold. But the throbbing pain was not as devastating as he'd expected, probably because he'd managed to hold so still. As long as he held very still, it wasn't much worse than Dondo's clawings.