Lois Bujold - Paladin of Souls

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."