[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
"Where did you take Lady Cattilara?"
"Laid down in her bedchamber, with her women to take care of her."
"Good. Foix, find dy Cabon and attend upon me there. Now."
"I must look to our defenses," said Arhys. "I'll join you as soon as I can. If
I can. Illvin . . . ?"
Illvin looked up from instructing a groom in the care of his injured horse.
Arhys's gaze flicked briefly toward the inner court, where his and his wife's
chambers lay. "Do what you must."
"Oh, aye." Illvin grimaced, and turned to follow Ista. The wild excitement
that had sustained him through the clash on the road was passing off. He
limped like his horse, stiff and weary, as they passed under the archway to
the fountain court.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CATTILARA'S CHAMBER HAD MUCH THE SAME AIR OF FEMININE refuge as when Ista had
entered it on her first day at Porifors. Now, however, the marchess's women
were upset rather than welcoming: either anxious and outraged or frightened
and guilty, depending on whether they had been privy to the escape plan. They
stared at the royina's present bloody, breathless, tight-lipped disarray with
horror. Ista ruthlessly dismissed them all, though with orders for wash water,
Page 171
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
drinks, and food for Lord
Illvin and for the rest of her party, who had all tumbled out onto the road a
lifetime ago this morning with no more breakfast than a swallow of tea and
bread, or less.
Illvin went to Cattilara's basin and wrung out a wet towel; he glanced at Ista
and politely handed it to her first. The red grime she rubbed off her face was
startling. Nor was all of the blood from the horse, she realized as she dabbed
gingerly at her scratches. Illvin rinsed and wrung out the cloth again and
rubbed down his own bloody face and dirt-streaked torso, and accepted a cup of
drinking water from Liss, draining it in a gulp. He then trod over to Ista's
side to stare at Cattilara, laid down on her bed still in her traveling dress.
The right sleeve had been removed, and a compress bound about the ambiguous
wound in her shoulder.
She was lovely as a sleeping child, unmarred but for a smudge on her cheek. On
her, it looked an elegant decoration. But Illvin's finger uneasily traced the
new sunken quality around her eyes. "Surely her body is too slight to support
Arhys's as well as her own."
And he ought to know. Ista glanced at Illvin's hollow cheeks and ridged ribs.
"For weeks or months, no.
For hours or days ... I think it is her turn. And I know who Porifors can
least spare right now."
Illvin grimaced, and glanced over his shoulder at the opening door. Foix
escorted an anxious dy Cabon within.
"Five gods be thanked, you are saved, Royina!" the divine said in heartfelt
tones. "The Lady Cattilara as well!"
"I thank you, too, Learned," said Ista, "for abiding by my instructions."
He regarded the marchess's silent form with alarm. "She was not injured, was
she?"
"No, she is not hurt." Ista added reluctantly, "Yet. But I have induced her to
lend her own soul's strength to Arhys for a time, in place of Lord Illvin. Now
we must somehow compel her demon to speak. I don't know if it was master or
servant to Princess Umerue, but I am certain it was witness to more, a product
of Dowager Princess Joen's demonic machinations. Illvin was right, yesterday:
it has to know what she was doing, because it was part of what she was doing.
Although it seems to have escaped her .
. . leash." Upon reflection, an encouraging realization. "Joen's control is
evidently not inviolable."
Dy Cabon gazed at her in blank alarm, and Ista realized belatedly that this
must seem gibberish to him.
Illvin's high brow wrinkled in nearly equal puzzlement; he said cautiously,
"You said Joen seemed more uncanny than Sordso. How so?"
Haltingly, Ista tried to describe her inner vision of the dowager princess,
glimpsed so briefly and terrifyingly beside her wrecked palanquin, and of the
demon-ridden Prince Sordso. Of how Sordso's demon fire had seemed to unknit
her very bones. "Demons have always cringed before me up till now, though I do
not know why. I did not know I was so vulnerable to them." She glanced
uneasily at Foix.
"This array you describe is very strange," mused dy Cabon, rubbing his chins.
"One demon battening on
one soul is the rule. There is no room for more. And demons do not usually
tolerate each other even in the same general vicinity, let alone in the same
body. I do not know what force could harness them all together like that,
apart from the god Himself."
Ista bit her lip in thought. "What Joen contained did not look like what
Sordso contained. Sordso seemed possessed of a common demon, like Cattilara's
or Foix's, except ascendant instead of subordinate like Catti's when she let
it up for questioning, before, and we could barely force it back down again.
It was the demon, not her son, who was answering to Joen."
Page 172
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Dy Cabon's face bunched in distaste as he took this in.
Ista glanced at Foix, standing behind him and looking even less pleased. He
was as sweat-soaked and grimed from the morning's work as any of them, but he,
at least, seemed to have escaped any bloody wound. "Foix."
He jerked. "Royina?"
"Can you help me? I wish to push Cattilara's soul-fire down into her body, and
the demon light up into her head, that it may speak and answer and yet not
seize her. Without allowing it to break the net by which it sustains Arhys.
This not being a convenient moment to drop Porifors's commander down dead. .
. . More dead."
"Are you just waiting till Lord Arhys is ready, then, Royina, to release his
soul?" asked Foix curiously.
Ista shook her head. "I don't know if that is my task, or even if I could if I
tried. I fear to leave him a ghost, irrevocably cut off from the gods. Yet he
hangs by a thread now."
"Waiting till we are ready, more like," muttered Illvin.
Foix frowned down at Cattilara. "Royina, I stand prepared at your command to
do anything I can, but I
don't understand what you want of me. I see no fires, no lights. Do you?"
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]