Liss grinned back and returned to gazing enviously at the dancers. After a time, Ista couldn't bear it anymore, and gave her leave to join the party. Liss looked delighted with the unexpected treat, and startled Ista a trifle by popping directly over the balcony to hang one-handed and drop onto the pavement. She scampered off.
It felt odd to be alone. Ista drew a few slightly rude, if not unamiable, calls from passing men in the street, which she didn't know how to handle and therefore ignored. The men trod off more rudely and less amiably Liss had exchanged such banter earlier, with easy cheer, and sent their drunken admirers on their way chuckling. This is not my world. Yet she had ruled it once, supposedly, from a clouded distance in Cardegoss.
Ferda dy Gura emerged onto the neighboring balcony, found Ista by herself, glared a would-be serenader into slinking away, and chided her, albeit in the politest terms, for dispensing with her attendant. He vanished again, only to exit the inn below—by the doorway—and plunge into the crowd to retrieve Liss. When they came in sight again, they both had their fists clenched. Whatever hot exchange they were having, however, they muffled before they came back within Ista's hearing.
Ista led the way to bed. The festival continued noisily for some hours, but did not keep her awake.
DEEP IN THE NIGHT. SHE OPENED HER DREAMING EYES TO FIND herself in the mysterious castle courtyard again. This time the scene was dark—this very night? What seemed the same waning moon that was passing over Vinyasca gave a sickly, inadequate light. But the shadows were not impenetrable, for a strange glow hung in the air, like a rope made of white fire. It ran across the court and up the stairs, disappearing through the same heavy door at the end of the gallery. Ista's dream-self scarcely dared to touch it, though it drew her eyes. She followed it again, up the stairs, along the boards. Through the door.
The bedchamber was darker than the courtyard, shutters closed, moonless, but illuminated still; the rope of fire seemed to be rising up from the heart of the man stretched on the bed. The pale flames flickered all along his body as though he burned, coiling from his chest, flowing away . . . and then Ista wondered if she was looking at a rope, or a conduit. And where that conduit emptied out. She glanced back along the floating line of light and was moved to grasp it, let it tow her along to its destination as a cable might pull a drowning woman from the water.
Her dream-hand reached, gripped; the line broke, shattering under her fingers, spattering away in bright ripples.
The man on the bed woke, panted, started half-up. Saw her. Stretched out a burning hand.
"You!" he gasped. "Lady! Help me, in the god's name—"
Which god? Ista could not help thinking, in a sort of tilted hysteria. She dared not grasp that terrifying fiery hand, for all that it reached for her. "Who are you?"
His wide eyes devoured the sight of her. "She speaks!" His voice cracked. "My lady, I pray, don't go—"
Her eyes snapped open in the dimness of the little inn chamber in Vinyasca.
Nearly the only sound was Liss's slow, regular breathing on her pallet across the room. The festival dance had evidently ended, the last drunken revelers departed for home, or at least passed out in doorways along the route.
Silently, Ista swung her feet out of bed and padded to the locked shutters to the balcony. She eased up the latch and slipped out. The only lights were a pair of wall lanterns, burning low, flanking the closed doors of the temple across the plaza. She gazed up into the night sky at the waning moon. She knew it for the same moon as in her vision. The place, the man, were as real as she, wherever they were. So did the strange man dream this night of Ista, as Ista dreamed of him? What did his dark straining eyes see that made him reach out so desperately, and was he as bewildered by her as she was by him?
His voice had been rich in timbre, though scraped thin with pain or fear or exhaustion. But he had spoken in the Ibran tongue shared by Ibra and Chalion and Brajar, not in Roknari or Darthacan—albeit with a north Chalionese accent tinged by Roknari cadences.
I cannot help you. Whoever you are, I cannot help. Pray to your god, if you want rescue. Though I do not recommend it.
She fled the moonlight, locked the shutter, huddled back into her bed as soundlessly as she could, careful not to wake Liss. She pulled her feather pillow over her head. It blocked all vision except the very one she did not want to see, burning in her mind's eye. When she woke again on the morrow, all the events of the previous day would seem a more faded dream than this. She clenched her hands in her sheets and waited for the light.
AS LISS WAS BRAIDING ISTA'S HAIR, SOON AFTER DAWN THE NEXT morning, there came a knock on their chamber door, and Foix dy Gura's voice: "My lady? Liss?"
Liss went to the door and opened it onto the gallery that ran around the inn's interior well court. Foix, fully dressed for the road, gave her a nod, adding a little bow to Ista, who came up behind Liss's shoulder.
"Good morning, my lady. Learned dy Cabon sends his abject apologies, but he cannot lead prayers this morning. He is fallen very ill."
"Oh, no," said Ista. "Is it serious? Should we send someone to the temple to ask for a physician?" Vinyasca was much smaller than Valenda; was the Mother's Order here large enough to support a physician of good learning?
Foix rubbed his lips, which kept trying to quirk up in a smile. "Ah, I think not quite yet, my lady. It may just be something he ate yesterday. Or, er . . . wine-sickness."
"He was not drunk when I last saw him," said Ista doubtfully.
"Mm, that was earlier. Later, he went off with a party from the local temple, and, well, they brought him back quite late. Not that one can diagnose with certainty through a closed door, but his groans and noises sounded quite like wine-sickness to me. Horribly familiar, brought back memories. Mercifully blurred memories, but still."
Liss smothered a laugh.
Ista gave her a quelling frown, and said, "Very well. Tell your men to stand down and leave their horses to their hay. We shall attend the morning service at the temple instead, and decide whether to take to the road again . . . later. There is no hurry, after all."
"Very good, my lady." Foix gave her a nod and a little salute, and turned away.
Early services filled an hour, although it seemed to Ista that they were curtailed, and not well attended; the local divine was rather pale and wan himself. Afterward, she and Liss and Foix idled about the quiet town. The festival tents were being taken down and folded away. They walked along the river over the racecourse, and Foix encouraged Liss to give a blow-by-blow account of her ride, details of horses and riders that Ista had scarcely registered. Liss explained that her remarkable burst of speed, late in the race, was partly illusory; it had merely been that the other horses were starting to flag at that stage. Ista was pleased to note that her five-mile walk did not exhaust her as it had that day when she'd fled the castle in Valenda, and she didn't think it was wholly due to wearing more suitable clothing and shoes.
Learned dy Cabon emerged from his room around noon, his face the color of dough. Ista took one look at him, canceled the day's travel plans, and sent him back to bed. He crept away mumbling pitifully grateful thanks. She was relieved to see he was not feverish. Foix's diagnosis of wine-sickness seemed sound, confirmed when the divine slunk out again, shamefaced, in the evening and took a supper of toast and tea, turning down with loathing an offer of watered wine.
BY THE NEXT MORNING DY CABON SEEMED FULLY RECOVERED, although his sunrise sermon again reverted to a model from his book. Ista's party took to the road while the air was yet cool, fording the rocky river and climbing the hill road out of Vinyasca, heading north.
The country they rode through, on the dry side of the mountains, was sparsely wooded: stands of pine and evergreen oak with scrub between, gray rocks poking up through the yellow weeds. The soil was far too poor for much farming, except in patches and terrace gardens grubbed out and hand-tended, and the thinly populated area around Vinyasca soon gave way to utter wilderness. The road le
d up and down, one little valley looking much like the next. Sometimes old bridges or culverts, not in the best repair, crossed the streams tumbling down from the distant heights on their leftward side, but more often their horses and mules had to pick their way across boulder-studded fords. They stopped in the early afternoon to picnic by such a stream; the water was this land's one rich gift, clear and pure and cold.
The evening's goal was a reputed holy site tucked high in the hills, the village birthplace of a saintly woman healer, devotee of the Mother, whose miracles had all taken place far from here. Or else, Ista reflected as she rode along, they would have been far more obscure. The scampering golden rock gophers that popped up and chittered inhospitably as they passed would not have written them down and passed them around to attract foreign travelers in after-generations. After the visit, their route would descend to the easier roads in the Chalionese plains. And swing south again toward Baocia and home?
She did not want to go back. Yet how long could she go on like this, trailing these young men around the countryside on random roads? They would be wanted soon for harsher services, as the lords of Chalion prepared for the autumn campaign in the north. Well, then, let us all dodge our duties a little longer. The weather was mild, the season was right; the warm afternoon breathed a scent of mountain thyme and sage. The smell of blood and sweat and iron would overtake them all soon enough.
The track widened, curving around a wooded slope and then descending. Ferda and dy Cabon rode ahead, followed by one of the young guards and Foix. Liss rode close behind Ista, and the rest trailed after.
Ista felt it first as a wave of emotion: hot, confused menace; pain and desperation; a terrible shortness of breath. A moment later, her horse planted all four feet and came to an abrupt, trembling halt. Its head came up sharply, and it snorted.
From the shadows of the trees, the bear charged. Its head was lowered, its great shoulder crest stood up, its bronze fur rippled like water in the slanting afternoon light. It moved incredibly fast for such a bulky, low-slung creature, and its snarl split the air like a saw.
Every horse and mule in the party tried to wheel and bolt. The young guard ahead of Ista, Pejar, swung left as his panicked mount shied right, and they parted company. Ista didn't see him hit the ground, for her own horse reared then, squealing. Too late, she tried to shorten her reins, grab mane. Her saddle pommel hit her hard in the stomach, her saddle jerked away from under her, and then the ground came up in a whirl, knocking her wind half out. Dizzied, she rolled to her feet, missing her lunge for a flapping rein.
Horses were galloping away in all directions, their furious riders sawing at their reins in an effort to regain control. Pejar's horse, its saddle empty, was far down the track already, Ista's horse bucking and kicking in its wake. The young man, flat on the ground, was staring up in terror as the drooling bear loomed over him. Was the animal mad, to so attack? Ordinarily these mountain bears were elusive, shy; and this was no mother defending cubs, but a large male.
It's not a bear. Or—not only a bear. Gasping, fascinated, Ista Staggered nearer. Despite the initial impression of terrifying energy, it wasn't a well bear, either. Its fur, now that she saw it more closely, was mangy, falling out in patches, and despite its large frame, its flesh was thin. Its legs trembled. It stared up at Ista as if as fascinated by her as she was by it.
It seemed to her as though its essential bear-ness was almost eaten away, from the inside out. The eyes that stared back at her had a red intelligence that owed nothing to any animal mind. It has caught a demon. And the demon has nearly devoured it.
And now the rider seeks another mount.
"How dare you," Ista grated. Not even a humble bear deserved this. You don't belong here, demon. Go back to your accursed master. Their gazes locked; she stepped closer; the bear stepped back from the white-faced boy. Another step. Another. The bear-demon lowered its head almost to the ground, its eyes wide and white-ringed, snuffling, backing away in fear.
"Royina, I come!" With a grunting cry, Foix appeared from the corner of Ista's vision, vest-cloak billowing, swinging his broadsword in a mighty arc. His lips were drawn back, strong teeth clenched with the effort of his strike.
"No, Foix!" Ista screamed, too late.
The heavy blade took the bear's head in one blow, and went on to bury itself in the soil beneath. Blood burst briefly from the creature's neck, and the head rolled away over the ground. One front paw spasmed; the big furry body dropped in a heap.
Ista seemed to see the demon with every sense but her eyes, a palpable force, a blood tinged fire, a smell like hot metal. It roared toward her, then, suddenly, scrambled back in a sort of bestial terror. It hesitated a desperate moment between Foix and the boy on the ground. Then it flowed into Foix.
Foix's eyes widened. "What?" he said, in a weirdly conversational tone. Then his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.
Chapter Six
LISS WAS THE FIRST TO GET CONTROL OF HER MOUNT AND gallop back; she swung down off her bay, breathless with confusion and alarm. The groaning Pejar pushed himself up to a sitting position and boggled at the beheaded bear. His brow wrinkled in bewilderment at the sight of Foix lying on the ground beside the carcass, which still leaked hot blood. "Sir . . . ?"
The fall from her horse had shaken Ista's stomach, but it was the concussion from the demon's passage that reverberated in her bones. Her mind felt unnaturally distanced from her body. She pulled off her vest-cloak, folded it, and knelt to try to drag Foix's heavy body around and pillow his head.
Liss said, "Lady, wait—was he stunned when his horse threw him? There may be broken bones ..."
"Did his horse throw him? I didn't see." That would explain why he had been first to reach the bear, certainly. "No, he was not hurt then. He slew the beast." More's the pity.
"He slid right over the crupper onto his, um. Backside. I suppose there were no bones to break there." Liss wrapped one rein around her arm to hold her snorting, backing horse, and knelt to help, poking her head up for an impressed glance at the evidence of carcass, sword, and distant head. "Five gods, what a blow." She stared down at Foix. His face was the color of porridge. "What's the matter with him?"
Ferda rode up next, took one look, and vaulted from his horse not even bothering to keep a rein. "Foix! Royina, what has happened?" He knelt to run his hands over his brother's body, searching for the injury, obviously expecting to see bloody damage from some massive clawed swipe. His brows knotted as he found none. He started to try to turn Foix over. Dy Cabon labored up, minus his mule, gasping for breath.
Ista grasped Ferda's arm. "No, your brother was not struck."
"He chopped off the bear's head. Then he just . . . fell over," confirmed Pejar.
"Was the beast mad, to attack like that?" panted dy Cabon. He bent over his belly to brace his hands on his knees and stare around as well.
"Not mad," said Ista in a flat voice. "Demon-ridden."
Dy Cabon's eyes widened, searching her face. "Are you sure, Royina?"
"Entirely sure. I ... felt it." It felt me.
Ferda rocked back on his heels, looking dumfounded.
"Where did it . . ." Dy Cabon's voice trailed off as he surveyed the shaken guard, Ista upright and in apparent possession of her wits. Foix lying as though bludgeoned. "It didn't go into him, did it?"
"Yes." Ista moistened her lips. "It was backing off. I tried to stop him, but all he saw was a mad bear, I think, seeming to menace me."
Dy Cabon's lips repeated the word, Seeming? His gaze upon her sharpened.
Dy Cabon's manifest belief finally convinced the stunned Ferda. His face nearly crumpled in tears. "Learned, what will happen to Foix?"
"That depends"—dy Cabon swallowed—"much on the nature of the demon in question."
"It was bearish," reported Ista, still in that same flat voice. "It may have consumed other creatures before the bear, but it could not have ingested the nature or intelligence of a man yet. It had no speech."
But now it possesses a very banquet of words and wits. How quickly would it start its feast?
"That will change," muttered dy Cabon, echoing Ista's own thought. He took a deep breath. "Nothing will happen instantly," he asserted more loudly. Ista did not quite like the too-hearty tone of that. "Foix can resist. If he chooses. An inexperienced demon needs time to grow, to learn."
To dig in, Ista's thought supplied. To tap a soul's strength, to prepare for siege. Did it follow that an experienced demon, fat with many souls of men, could conquer in a breath?
"Still, we should give it as little time as possible to ... as little time as possible. A temple at one of the provincial seats will have the means, the scholars to deal with this. We must take him at once to the arch-divine of Taryoon—no. That would take a week." He stared out over the hills toward the distant plains. "The provincial temple at Maradi is closer. Ferda, where are your maps? We must find the speediest route."
The other guardsmen were riding up, having captured the loose horses and mules. One towed Ferda's mount. Ferda rose to search his saddlebags, but turned back quickly as Foix stirred and groaned.
Foix's eyes opened. He stared up at the sky and the ring of faces hovering anxiously over him, and his brows drew down in a wince. "Oh," he muttered.
Ferda knelt by his head, his hands opening and closing helplessly. "How do you feel?" he ventured at last.
Foix blinked. "I feel very strange." He made a clumsy gesture with one hand—it looked like a paw, swiping—and tried to roll over and stand up. He ended up on all fours instead. It took him two more tries to gain his feet. Dy Cabon held one arm and Ferda the other as he blinked again and moved his jaw back and forth a few times. He reached his hand toward his mouth, missed, and tried again. His fingers probed as if reassuring himself he felt a jaw and not a muzzle. "What happened?"
For a long moment, no one dared to answer. He looked around at their horror-stricken stares with increasing dismay.