As this wellspring was sacred to the Daughter, dy Cabon stood on the bank of the rivulet in the sun-dappled shade and commenced with a short springtime prayer from a small book of occasional devotions he carried in his saddlebag. Exactly why this well was sacred to the Lady of Spring was a little unclear. Ista found the innkeeper's assertion that it was the true secret location of the miracle of the virgin and the water jar a trifle unconvincing, as she knew of at least three other sites in Chalion alone that claimed that legend. But the beauty of the place was surely excuse enough for its holy reputation.
Dy Cabon, his stained robes seeming almost white in this pure light, pocketed his book and cleared his throat for the morning lesson. Since the tables behind them stood set and waiting for breakfast to be served when prayers were done, Ista was confident that the sermon would be succinct.
"As this is the beginning of a spiritual journey, I shall go back to the tale of beginnings we all learned in our childhoods." The divine closed his eyes briefly, as if marshaling memory. "Here is the story as Ordol writes it in his Letters to the Young Royse dy Brajar."
His eyes opened again, and his voice took up a storyteller's rhythm. "The world was first and the world was flame, fluid and fearsome. As the flame cooled, matter formed and gained vast strength and endurance, a great globe with fire at its heart. From the fire at the heart of the world slowly grew the World-Soul.
"But the eye cannot see itself, not even the Eye of the World-Soul. So the World-Soul split in two, that it might so perceive itself; and so the Father and the Mother came into being. And with that sweet perception, for the first time, love became possible in the heart of the World-Soul. Love was the first of the fruits that the realm of the spirit gifted back to the realm of matter that was its fountain and foundation. But not the last, for song was next, then speech." Dy Cabon, speaking, grinned briefly and drew another long breath.
"And the Father and the Mother between them began to order the world, that existence might not be instantly consumed again by fire and chaos and roiling destruction. In their first love for each other they bore the Daughter and the Son, and divided the seasons of the world among them, each with its special and particular beauty, each to its own lordship and stewardship. And in the harmony and security of this new composition, the matter of the world grew in boldness and complexity. And from its strivings to create beauty, plants and animals and men arose, for love had come into the fiery heart of the world, and matter sought to return gifts of spirit to the realm of spirit, as lovers exchange tokens."
Satisfaction flickered across dy Cabon's suety features, and he swayed a trifle with his cadences as he became absorbed by his tale. Ista suspected they were getting to his favorite part.
"But the fire at the heart of the world also held forces of destruction that could not be denied. And from this chaos rose the demons, who broke out and invaded the world and preyed upon the fragile new souls growing there as a mountain wolf preys upon the lambs of the valleys. It was the Season of Great Sorcerers. The order of the world was disrupted, and winter and spring and summer and fall upended one into another. Drought and flood, ice and fires threatened the lives of men, and of all the marvelous plants and artful creatures that matter, infected by love, had offered on the altar of the World-Soul.
"Then one day a powerful demon lord, wise and wicked by the consumption of many souls of men, came upon a man living alone in a tiny hermitage in a wood. Like a cat who thinks to toy with her prey, he accepted the beggar's hospitality and waited his chance to leap from the worn-out body he presently possessed to the fresh new one. For the man, though clad in rags, was beautiful: his glance was like a sword thrust and his breath, perfume.
"But the demon lord was confounded when he accepted a little earthen bowl of wine, and drank it in one gulp, and prepared to pounce; for the saint had divided his own soul, and poured it out into the wine, and given it to the demon of his own free will. And so for the first time, a demon gained a soul, and all the beautiful and bitter gifts of a soul.
"The demon lord fell to the floor of the woodland cell and howled with all the astonished woe of a child being born, for he was born in that moment, into the world of both matter and spirit. And taking the hermit's body that was his free gift, and not stolen nor begrudged, he fled through the woods in terror back to his terrible sorcerer's palace, and hid.
"For many months he cowered there, trapped in the horror of his self, but slowly the great-souled saint began to teach him the beauties of virtue. The saint was a devotee of the Mother, and called down Her grace to heal the demon of his sin, for with the gift of free will had come the possibility of sin, and the burning shame of it, which tormented the demon as nothing had ever done before. And between the lash of his sin and the lessons of the saint, the demon's soul began to grow in probity and power. As a great sorcerer-paladin, with the Mother's favor fluttering upon his mailed sleeve, he began to move in the world of matter, and fight the baleful soulless demons on the gods' behalf in the places where They could not reach.
"The great-souled demon became the Mother's champion and captain, and She loved him without limit for his soul's incandescent splendor. And so began the great battle to clear the world of demons run rampant and restore the order of the seasons.
"The other demons feared him, and attempted to combine against him, but could not, for such cooperation was beyond their nature; still their onslaught was terrible, and the great-souled demon, beloved of the Mother, was slain on the final battlefield.
"And so was born the last god, the Bastard, love child of the goddess and the great-souled demon. Some say He was born on the eve of the last battle, fruit of a union upon Her great couch, some say the grieving Mother gathered up the great-souled demon's shattered dear remains from the stricken field and mixed them with Her blood, and so made the Bastard by Her great art. However so, their Son, of all the gods, was given agency over both spirit and matter, for He inherited as servants the demons that His father's great sacrifice had conquered and enslaved and so swept out of the world.
"What is certainly a lie," dy Cabon continued in a suddenly more prosaic, not to mention irate, tone of voice, "is the Quadrene heresy that the great-souled demon took the Mother by force and so engendered the Bastard upon Her against Her great will. A scurrilous and senseless and blasphemous lie . . ." Ista wasn't sure if he was still paraphrasing Ordol, or if that was his own gloss. He cleared his throat and finished more formally, "Here ends the tale and tally of the advent of the five gods."
Ista had heard various versions of the tally of the gods what seemed several hundred times since childhood, but she had to admit, dy Cabon's delivery of the old story had the eloquence and sincerity to make it seem almost new again. Granted, most versions did not give the complex story of the Bastard more space than the rest of the Holy Family put together, but people had to be allowed their favorites. Despite herself, she was moved.
Dy Cabon returned to ritual and called down the fivefold benison, asking of each god the proper gifts, leading the respondents in praise in return. Of the Daughter, growth and learning and love; of the Mother, children, health, and healing; of the Son, good comradeship, hunting, and harvest; of the Father, children, justice, and an easy death in its due time.
"And the Bastard grant us . . ."—dy Cabon's voice, fallen into the soothing singsong of ceremony, stumbled for the first time, slowing— "in our direst need, the smallest gifts; the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding." He blinked, looking startled.
Ista's chin snapped up; for an instant, her spine seemed to freeze. No. No. There is nothing here, nothing here, nothing here. Nothing, do you hear me? She forced her breath out slowly.
It was not the usual wording. Most prayers asked to be spared the fifth god's attention, the master of all disasters out of season as He was. The divine hastily signed himself, touching for
ehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, hand spread wide upon his chest above his broad paunch, and signed again in the air to call down blessing upon all assembled there. The company, released, stirred and stretched, some breaking into low-voiced talk, some strolling away to their day's tasks. Dy Cabon came toward Ista, rubbing his hands and smiling anxiously.
"Thank you, Learned," Ista said, "for that good beginning."
He bowed in relief at her approval. "My very great pleasure, my lady." He brightened still further as the inn's servants hurried to bring out what promised to be a very hearty breakfast. Ista, a little shamed by the excellence of his effort to have purloined the divine with false pretenses of a sham pilgrimage, was heartened by the reflection that dy Cabon was clearly enjoying his work.
THE COUNTRY WEST OF PALMA WAS FLAT AND BARREN, WITH ONLY A few trees clustering in the watercourses that broke up the long dull vistas. Grazing, not crop farming, was the main work of the thinly scattered old fortified farmsteads along the seldom-used road. Boys and dogs tended sheep and cattle, all dozing together in the distant patches of shade. The warming afternoon seemed to hold a long silence that invited sleep, not traveling, but given their late start, Ista's party pushed on through the soft and somnolent air.
When the road widened for a time, Ista found herself riding with dy Cabon's fine sturdy mule on one side and Liss's rangy bay on the other.
As an antidote to dy Cabon's infectious yawns, Ista inquired of him, "Tell me, Learned, whatever happened to that little demon you were carrying when first we met?"
Liss, who'd been riding along with her feet out of the stirrups and her reins slack, turned her head to listen.
"Oh, all went well. I gave it up to the archdivine of Taryoon, and we oversaw its disposition. It is safely out of the world now. I was actually returning to my home from there when I spent the night in Valenda, and, well." A jerk of his head at the string of riders trailing them indicated his unexpected new duty with the royina.
"A demon? You had a demon?" said Liss in a tone of wonder.
"Not I," corrected the divine fastidiously. "It was trapped in a ferret. Fortunately, not a difficult animal to control. Compared to a wolf or a bull." He grimaced. "Or a man, seeking to plunder the demon's powers."
Her face screwed up. "How do you send a demon out of the world?"
Dy Cabon sighed. "Give it to someone who's going."
She frowned at her horse's ears for a moment, then gave up the riddle. "What?"
"If the demon is not grown too strong, the simplest way to return it to the gods is to give it into the keeping of a soul who is going to the gods. Who is dying," he added to her blank look.
"Oh," she said. Another pause. "So . . . you slew the ferret?"
"It is, alas, not quite so easy as that. A free demon whose mount is dying simply jumps to another. You see, an elemental escaped into the world of matter cannot exist without a being of matter to lend it intelligence and strength, for by its nature it cannot create such order for itself. It can only steal. In the beginning it is mindless, formless, as innocently destructive as a wild animal, at least until it learns more complicated sins from men. It is constrained in turn by the power of the creature or person upon whom it battens. A dislodged demon will always seek to leap to the strongest soul in its vicinity, creature to larger creature, animal to man, man to greater man, for it becomes what it... eats, in a sense." Dy Cabon drew breath and seemed to look into some well of memory. "But when a divine of long experience is finally dying in his or her order's house, the demon can be forced to jump to them. If the demon is weak enough, and the divine strong of heart and mind even in the last extremity, well, the matter solves itself." He cleared his throat. "Persons great-souled and grown detached from the world, and longing for their god. For a demon can tempt a weaker person to sorcery with promises to extend life."
"Rare strength," said Ista after a moment. Had he just come from such an extraordinary deathbed scene? It seemed so. She did not wonder at his air of daunted humility.
Dy Cabon gave a wry shrug of acknowledgment. "Yes. I don't know if I will ever . . . Fortunately, stray demons are rare. Except that..."
"Except what?" Liss prodded, when no more of this rarified theological discourse seemed to be forthcoming.
Dy Cabon's lips twisted. "The archdivine was most disturbed. Mine was the third such fugitive that has been captured this year in Baocia alone."
"How many do you usually catch?" asked Liss.
"Not one a year in all of Chalion, or so it has been for many years. The last great outbreak was in Roya Fonsa's day."
Ias's father; Iselle's grandfather, dead these fifty years.
Ista considered dy Cabon's words. "What if the demon is not weak enough?"
Dy Cabon said, "Ah. Indeed." He was silent for a moment, staring at his mule's limp ears, hanging out to either side of its head like oars. "That is why my order gives much thought and effort to removing them when they are still small."
The road narrowed then, curving down to a small stone bridge over a greenish stream, and dy Cabon gave Ista a polite salute and pushed his mule ahead.
Chapter Four
THE NEXT DAY'S RIDING BEGAN EARLY AND RAN LONG, BUT slowly the barrens of Baocia fell away behind them. The country grew more rolling, better watered, and better wooded, running up toward the mountains just visible on the western horizon. It was still a bony land at heart.
The town wall of Casilchas hugged a rocky outcrop above a stream running clear and chill with spring runoff from the distant heights. Gray and ochre stone, rough or dressed, formed both walls and buildings, here and there enlivened with plaster dyed pink or pale green, or with painted wooden doors or shutters, rich red or blue or green in the angled light of the late-spring afternoon. One might drink this light like wine and grow intoxicated on color, Ista thought, as their horses clopped down the narrow streets.
The town's temple fronted a small plaza paved with irregular slabs of granite fitted together like a puzzle. Opposite it, in what had the look of some local aristocrat's old mansion bequeathed to the order, Ista's party found the Bastard's seminary.
A smaller hatch in the ironbound slab-planked double doors opened at dy Cabon's pounding, and the porter came out. He met the divine's first greetings with discouraging headshaking. Dy Cabon disappeared inside for a few minutes. Then both doors swung wide, and grooms and dedicats scurried to assist the party with horses and baggage. Ista's horse was led within. Three stories of ornate wooden balconies rose above a cobbled courtyard. A white-gowned acolyte hurried up with a mounting block. A senior divine bowed and offered humble welcome. It was Sera dy Ajelo's name he spoke, but Ista had no illusions; it was Ista dy Chalion to whom he scraped. Dy Cabon might have been less discreet than she wished, but there was no doubt it won them better rooms, eager servants, and the best care for their tired mounts.
Wash water was brought almost on their heels to the room where Ista and Liss were guided. No rooms at the seminary were large, Ista suspected, but theirs had space for a bed, a truckle bed, and a table and chairs, with a balcony overlooking the town wall and the stream behind this main building. Meals for both women were brought soon thereafter on trays, with hastily arranged pots of blue and white flowers for the season as well.
After supper Ista took her handmaiden, with Ferda and Foix for escort, and strolled around the town in the fading light. The two officer-dedicats made a handsome pair, in their blue tunics and gray cloaks, swords carried with circumspection, not swagger; and not a few Casilchas maidens'—and matrons'—heads turned as they passed. Liss's stride and height nearly matched that of the dy Gura brothers, a display of youth and health to make silks and jewels look like tawdry toys. Ista felt herself as splendidly attended as ever she had been at the roya's court.
The temple was of the standard plan, if of small scale: four domed lobes, one for each member of the Holy Family, around an open court where the holy fire burned on its central hearth, with the Bastard's Tower fre
estanding behind His Mother's court. The walls were built of the native gray stone, though the roof arches were finely carved wood, with a small riot of brightly painted demons, saints, holy animals, and plants appropriate to each god cavorting along the beams. For lack of any better entertainment, they all attended the evening services there.
Ista was weary of the gods, but she had to admit, the singing was a pleasure; the seminary contributed a white-robed and enthusiastic choir. The pious effect was only slightly spoiled by the choir leader peeking periodically at Ista for her reaction. Ista sighed inwardly and made sure to smile and nod, to assuage the woman's anxiety.
Three days of riding had tired both people and animals; tomorrow both would rest here. A little elusive ease seemed to have crept in to Ista's spirit—whether its source was sunlight, exercise, cheerful young company, or distance from Valenda, she hardly knew, but she was grateful for it. She slid her body under the feather quilt, finding the narrow bed more luxurious than many more ornate but less comfortable ones in royal castles, and fell asleep before Liss stopped rolling over in her truckle.
ISTA DREAMED, AND KNEW SHE WAS DREAMING.
She crossed a paved castle courtyard in a late-spring or early-summer noon. A stone-arched walk ran around the court's edge, the fine alabaster pillars carved with a tracery of vines and flowers in the Roknari style. The sun shone down high and hot; the shadows were black accent marks at her feet. She climbed—no, floated—up the stone stairs at the end, leading up over the arched walk to a wooden gallery, and along it. At the far end, a room: she passed softly into it without opening the carved door, which seemed to part and close around her skin like water.
The room was dim and cool, but a grid of light fell through the shutters onto the woven rugs, making the muted colors briefly blaze. In the room, a bed; on the bed, a form. Ista drifted closer, like a ghost.
The form was a man, asleep or dead, but very pale and still. His long, lean body was dressed in an undyed linen robe, folded across his chest and bound at the waist with a linen belt. On his left breast, a patch of dark red blood seeped through the cloth.