Lois Bujold - The Curse of Chalion

Cazaril told the tale, starting from his precipitate departure from Cardegoss riding to the royesse's ordering. Tea arrived, was consumed, and the cups refilled before he came to the end of it. Daris hunkered in the doorway, listening; Cazaril supposed he need not ask after the ex-groom's discretion. When he tried to describe his gathering-in by the Lady, he became tongue-tangled. Umegat hung on his halting words, lips parted.

"Poetry—poetry might do it," said Cazaril. "I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name."

"Hm," said Umegat. "I tried to recapture the god with music, for a time, after my first... experience. I had not the gift, alas."

Cazaril nodded. He asked diffidently, "Is there anything you—either of you—need, that I can command? Iselle has yesterday made me chancellor of Chalion, so I suppose I can command, well, rather a lot."

Umegat's brows flicked up; he favored Cazaril with a little congratulatory bow, from his seat. "That was well done of the young royina."

Cazaril grimaced. "I keep thinking about dead men's boots, actually."

Umegat's smile glimmered. "I understand. As for us, the Temple cares for its ex-saints reasonably well, and supplies us all that we can presently use. I like these rooms, this city, this spring air, my company. I hope the god will yet grant me an interesting task or two, before I'm done. Although, by preference, not with animals. Or royalty."

Cazaril made a motion of sympathy. "I suppose you knew poor Orico as well as almost anyone, except perhaps Sara."

"I saw him nearly every day for six years. He spoke to me most frankly, toward the end. I hope I was a consolation to him."

Cazaril hesitated. "For what it's worth, I came to the conclusion that he was something of a hero."

Umegat nodded briefly. "So did I. In a frustrating sort of way. He was a sacrifice, surely." He sighed. "Well, it is a particular sin to permit grief for what is gone to poison the praise for what blessings remain to us."

The tongueless man rose from his silent spot to take away the tea things.

"Thank you, Daris," said Umegat, and patted the hand that touched him briefly on the shoulder; Daris gathered up the cups and plates and padded off.

Cazaril stared curiously after him. "Have you known him long?"

"About twenty years."

"Then he was not just your assistant in the menagerie..." Cazaril lowered his voice. "Was he martyred back then?"

"No. Not yet."

"Oh."

Umegat smiled. "Don't look so glum, Lord Cazaril. We get better. That was yesterday. This is today. I shall ask his permission to tell you the tale of it sometime."

"I should be honored with his confidence."

"All is well, and if it's not, then at least each day brings us closer to our god."

"I had noticed that. I had a little trouble tracking time, the first few days after... after I saw the Lady. Time, and scale, both altered out of reckoning."

A light knock sounded upon the chamber door. Daris emerged from the other room and went to admit a white-smocked young dedicat who held a book in her hand.

"Ah." Umegat brightened. "It is my reader. Make your bow to the Lord Chancellor, Dedicat." He added in explanation, "They send a delinquent dedicat to read to me for an hour a day, as a light punishment for small infractions of the house rules. Have you decided what rule you mean to break tomorrow, girl?"

The dedicat grinned sheepishly. "I'm thinking, Learned Umegat."

"Well if you run out of ideas, I will harken back to my youth and see if I can't remember a few more."

The dedicat tipped the book toward Cazaril. "I thought I would be sent to read dull theology to the divine, but instead he wanted this book of tales."

Cazaril glanced over the volume, an Ibran import judging by the printer's mark, with interest.

"It's a fine conceit, " said Umegat. "The author follows a group of travelers to a pilgrimage shrine, and has each one tell his or her tale in turn. Very, ah, holy."

"Actually, my lord," the dedicat whispered, "some of them are very lewd."

"I see I must dust off Ordol's sermon on the lessons of the flesh. I have promised the dedicat time off from the Bastard's penances for her blushes. I fear she believes me." Umegat smiled.

"I, ah... should be very pleased to borrow that book, when you're finished with it," Cazaril said hopefully.

"I'll have it sent up to you, my lord."

Cazaril made his farewells. He recrossed the five-sided Temple Square and headed uphill, but turned aside before the Zangre came in sight and made his way to Provincar dy Baocia's town palace. The blocky old stone building resembled Jironal Palace, though much smaller, with no windows on its lower floor, and its next floor's casements protected by wrought-iron grilles. It had been reopened not only for its lord and lady but also the old Provincara and Lady Ista, who had arrived from Valenda. Full to bursting, its former sullen empty silence was turned to bustle. Cazaril stated his rank and business to a bowing porter, and was whisked inside without question or delay.

The porter led him to a high sunny chamber at the back of the house. Here he found Dowager Royina Ista sitting out on a little iron-railed balcony overlooking the small herb garden and stable mews. She dismissed her attendant woman and gestured Cazaril to the vacated chair, almost knee to knee with her. Ista's dun hair was neatly braided today, wreathing her head; both her face and her dress seemed somehow crisper, more clearly defined than Cazaril had ever seen them before.

"This is a pleasant place," Cazaril observed, easing himself down in the chair.

"Yes, I like this room. It is the one I had when I was a girl, when my father brought us up to the capital with him, which was not often. Best of all, I cannot see the Zangre from it." She gazed down into the domestic square of garden, embroidered with green, protected and contained.

"You came to the banquet there last night." He had only been able to exchange a few formal words with her in that company, Ista merely congratulating him on his chancellorship and his betrothal, and departing early "You looked very well, too, I must say. I could see Iselle was gratified."

She inclined her head. "I eat there to please her. I do not care to sleep there."

"I suppose the ghosts are still about. I cannot see them now, to my great relief."

"Nor I, with sight or second sight, but I feel them as a chill in the walls. Or perhaps it's just the memory of them that chills me." She rubbed her arms as if to warm them. "I abhor the Zangre."

"I understand the poor ghosts much better now than when they first terrified me," said Cazaril diffidently. "I thought their exile and erosion was a rejection by the gods, at first, a damnation, but now I know it for a mercy. When the souls are taken up, they remember themselves... the minds possess their lives all whole, all at once, as the gods do, with nearly the terrible clarity that matter remembers itself. For some... for some that heaven would be as unbearable as any hell, and so the gods release them to forgetfulness."

"Forgetfulness. That smudged oblivion seems a very heaven to me now. I pray to be such a ghost, I think."

I fear it is a mercy you shall be denied. Cazaril cleared his throat. "You know the curse is lifted off of Iselle and Bergon, and all, and banished out of Chalion?"

"Yes. Iselle has told me of it, to the limit of her understanding, but I knew it when it happened. My ladies were dressing me to go down to the Daughter's Day morning prayers. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear or feel, but it was as though a fog had lifted from my mind. I did not realize how closely it had cloaked me round, like a clammy mist on the skin of my soul, till it was lifted. I was sorry then, for I thought it meant you had died."