Lois Bujold - The Curse of Chalion

"Very well, my lady," said Cazaril, turning back and ducking his head. "She is very quick at her arithmetic and geometry, and very, um, persistent in her Darthacan."

"Good," said Ista. "That's good." She stared away briefly across the sun-bleached garden.

The companion bent over her frame to tie off a thread. Lady Ista did not embroider. Cazaril had heard it whispered by a maidservant that she and her ladies had worked for half a year upon an elaborate altar cloth for the Temple. Just as the last stitches were set, the royina had suddenly seized it and burned it in the fireplace of her chamber when her women had left her alone for a moment. True tale or not, her hands held no needle today, but only a rose.

Cazaril searched her face for deeper recognition. "I wondered... I have meant to ask you, my lady, if you remembered me from the days I served your noble father as a page here. A score of years ago, now, so it would be no wonder if you had forgotten me." He ventured a smile. "I had no beard then." Helpfully, he pressed his hand over the lower half of his face.

Ista smiled back, but her brows drew down in an effort of recognition that was clearly futile. "I'm sorry. My late father had many pages, over the years."

"Indeed, he was a great lord. Well, no matter." Cazaril shifted his book from hand to hand to hide his disappointment, and smiled more apologetically. He feared her nonrecall had nothing to do with her nervous state. He had more likely simply never registered upon her in the first place, an eager young woman looking forward and upward, not down or back.

The royina's companion, hunting in her color box, murmured, "Drat," and glanced up in appraisal at Cazaril. "My lord dy Cazaril," she said, smiling invitingly. "If it would be no trouble to you, might you stay and keep my lady good company while I run up to my room and find my dark green silk?"

"No trouble at all, lady," said Cazaril automatically. "That is, um..." He glanced at Ista, who gazed back at him levelly, with an unsettling tinge of irony. Well, it wasn't as though Ista were given to shrieking and raving. Even the tears he had sometimes seen in her eyes welled silently. He gave the companion a little half bow as she rose; she seized him by the arm and took him a little way around the arbor.

She stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. "All will be well. Just don't mention Lord dy Lutez. And stay by her, till I return. If she starts going on again about old dy Lutez, just... don't leave her." She darted off.

Cazaril considered this hazard.

The brilliant Lord dy Lutez had been for thirty years the late Roya Ias's closest advisor: boyhood friend, brother in arms, boon companion. Over time Ias had loaded him with every honor that was his to command, making him provincar of two districts, chancellor of Chalion, marshal of his household troops, and master of the rich military order of the Son—all the better to control and compel the rest, men murmured. It had been whispered by enemies and admirers alike that dy Lutez was roya in Chalion in all but name. And Ias his royina...

Cazaril sometimes wondered if it had been weakness or cleverness on Ias's part, to let dy Lutez do the dirty work and take the heat of the high lords' grumbling, leaving his master with the name only of Ias the Good . Though not, Cazaril conceded, Ias the Strong , nor Ias the Wise , nor, the gods knew, ever Ias the Lucky . It was dy Lutez who had arranged Ias's second marriage to the Lady Ista, surely giving lie to the persistent rumor among the highborn of Cardegoss of an unnatural love between the roya and his lifelong friend. And yet...

Five years after the marriage, dy Lutez had fallen from the roya's grace, and all his honors, abruptly and lethally. Accused of treason, he'd died under torture in the dungeons of the Zangre, the great royal keep at Cardegoss. Outside of the court of Chalion, it was whispered that his real treason had been to love the young Royina Ista. In more intimate circles, a considerably more hushed whisper had it that Ista had at last persuaded her husband to destroy her hated rival for his love.

However the triangle was arranged, in the shrinking geometry of death it had collapsed from three points to two, and then, as Ias turned his face to the wall and died not a year after dy Lutez, one alone. And Ista had taken her children and fled the Zangre, or was exiled therefrom.

Dy Lutez. Don't mention dy Lutez . Don't mention, therefore, most of the history of Chalion for the past generation and a half. Right.

Cazaril returned to Ista and, somewhat warily, sat in the departed companion's chair. Ista had taken to shredding her rose, not wildly, but very gently and systematically, plucking the petals and laying them upon the bench beside her in a pattern mimicking their original form, circle within circle in an inward spiral.

"The lost dead visited me in my dreams last night," Ista continued conversationally. "Though they were only false dreams. Do yours ever visit you so, Cazaril?"

Cazaril blinked, and decided she was too aware for this to be dementia, even if she was a trifle elliptical. And besides, he had no trouble catching her meaning, which would surely not be the case if she were mad. "Sometimes I dream of my father and mother. For a little time, they walk and talk as in life... so I regret to wake again, and lose them anew."

Ista nodded. "False dreams are sad that way. But true dreams are cruel. The gods spare you from ever dreaming their true dreams, Cazaril."

Cazaril frowned, and cocked his head. "All my dreams are but confused throngs, and disperse like smoke and vapors upon my waking."

Ista bent her head to her denuded rose; she now was spreading the golden powdery stamens, fine as snips of silk thread, in a tiny fan within the circle of petals. "True dreams sit like lead upon the heart and stomach. Weight enough to... drown our souls in sorrow. True dreams walk in the waking day. And yet betray us still, as certainly as any man of flesh might swallow back his vomited promises, like a dog its cast-up dinner. Don't put your trust in dreams, Castillar. Or in the promises of men." She raised her face from her array of petals, her eyes suddenly intent.

Cazaril cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Nay, lady, that would be foolish. But it's pleasant to see my father, from time to time. For I shall not meet him any other way again."

She gave him an odd, tilted smile. "You don't fear your dead?"

"No, my lady. Not in dreams."

"Perhaps your dead are not very fearsome folk."

"For the most part, no, ma'am," he agreed.

High in the wall of the keep, a casement window swung wide, and Ista's companion leaned out and stared down into the garden. Apparently reassured by the sight of her lady in gentle conversation with her shabby courtier, she waved and disappeared again.

Cazaril wondered how Ista passed the time. She did not sew, apparently, nor did she seem much of a reader, nor did she keep musicians of her own. Cazaril had seen her sporadically at prayers, some weeks spending hours in the ancestors' hall, or at the little portable altar kept in her chambers, or, far more rarely, escorted by her ladies and dy Ferrej down to the temple in town, though never at its crowded moments. Other times weeks would pass when she seemed to keep no observances to the gods at all. "Have you much consolation in prayers, lady?" he asked curiously.

She glanced up, and her smile flattened a trifle. "I? I have not much consolation anywhere. The gods have surely made a mock of me. I would return the favor, but they hold my heart and my breath hostage to their whims. My children are prisoners of fortune. And fortune is gone mad, in Chalion."

He offered hesitantly, "I think there are worse prisons than this sunny keep, lady."