Chalion #02 - Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

Author:Lois McMaster Bujold [Bujold, Lois McMaster]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-09-18T17:35:42+00:00

"Even the third one?"

"Yes." No dream, that, but she was abashed by that rash kiss. Though after Cattilara's performance, it had seemed such a small self-indulgence . . .

He cleared his throat. "My apologies, Royina."

"What for?"

"Ah . . ." He glanced at her lips, and away. "Nothing."

She tried not to think about the taste of his reviving mouth. Goram dragged the somewhat battered chair to Illvin's bedside for her, and put out the stool at the bed's foot for Liss, before retreating to stand at a hunched sort of attention by the far wall. Ista and Illvin were left staring at one another in equal, she was sure, bafflement.

"Supposing," he began again, "that you are not here by chance, but by the prayers of, well"—he cleared his throat in embarrassment— "someone—it must be to solve this tangle. Yes?"

"Say rather, uncover it. Its solution eludes me."

"I thought you had agency over Catti's demon. Will you not banish it?"

"I don't know how," she admitted uneasily. "The Bastard has given me my second sight—given me back, I should say, my second sight, for this is not the first time the gods have troubled me. But the god gave me no instructions, unless they are contained in another man I saw in my dreams." And vice versa. Upon consideration ... was dy Cabon's appearance, on the heels of the Bastard's mysterious second kiss, some sort of intimation of just that? "The god sent me a spiritual conductor, Learned dy Cabon, and I dearly desire his counsel in this before I proceed. He has studied something, I believe, about how demons are properly dispatched back to their Master. I'm certain he is meant to be here.

But I have lost him on the road, and I fear for his safety." She hesitated. "I'm not in haste in this matter. I see no merit in releasing Arhys from his body only to doom him to the damnation of a lost ghost."

He grew still. "A ghost? Are you sure?"

"I saw it, when the spell was interrupted here yesterday. Nothing . .. happened, and it should have. There is a white roaring, when the doors of a soul are opened by death to the gods; it is a huge event. Damnation is but a silence, a slow freezing." She rubbed her tired eyes. "And more—even if I knew how he might find his way to his god, I am by no means sure that Arhys can convince his wife to release him. Yet if he does not persuade her, who else could? Not me, I fear. And even if she would let him go ... the demon she has contracted seems skilled and powerful. If she no longer is sustained by the overmastering will to keep Arhys seeming-alive, if she collapses into grief—she will be very vulnerable to it."

He vented a "Hm" of deepening doubt.

"Has she much strength of character, in your observation?"

He frowned. "I would not have said so, before this. Lovely girl, adores Arhys, but I'd swear that if she held up a lighted candle beside one pretty ear, I could blow it out through the other.

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