In time, he’d picked himself back up off the pavement, ashamed of his tantrum, grateful that none of his men had witnessed the performance. The next watch came on, and he’d gone down in silence. Where nothing more happened for some weeks, till the arrival of that well-fed courier with the news that it had all been in vain, and all their blood and sacrifice was to be sold for gold to go into dy Jironal’s coffers.
And his men were marched to safety.
And his feet alone went down another road…
What was it that Ista had said? The gods’ most savage curses come to us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.
So, in choosing to share one’s will with the gods, was it enough to choose once, like signing up to a military company with an oath? Or did one have to choose and choose and choose again, every day? Or was it both? Could he step off this road anytime, get on a horse, and ride to, say, Darthaca, to a new name, a new life? Just like Umegat’s postulated hundred other Cazarils, who’d not even shown up for duty. Abandoning, of course, all who’d trusted him, Iselle and Ista and the Provincara, Palli and Betriz…
But not, alas, Dondo.
He squirmed a little on the mat, uncomfortably aware of the pressure in his belly, trying to convince himself it was just the Fox’s banquet, and not his tumor creeping to hideous new growth. Racing to some grotesque completion, waiting only for the Lady’s hand to falter. Maybe the gods had learned from Ista’s mistake, from dy Lutez’s failure of nerve, as well? Maybe they were making sure their mule couldn’t desert in the middle like dy Lutez this time…?
Except into death. That door was always ajar. What waited him on the other side? The Bastard’s hell? Ghostly dissolution? Peace?
Bah.
On the other side of the Temple plaza, in the Daughter’s house, what waited him was a nice soft bed. That his brain had reached this feverish spin was a good sign he ought to go get in it. This wasn’t prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.
Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.
At the last moment, with principles agreed upon, treaties written out in multiple copies in a fair court hand, signed by all parties and their witnesses, and sealed, practicalities nearly brought all to a halt. The Fox, not without reason in Cazaril’s view, balked at sending his son into Chalion with so little guarantee of his personal safety. But the roya had neither the men nor the money in his war-weary royacy to raise a large force to guard Bergon, and Cazaril was fearful of the effect upon Chalion of taking arms across the border, even in so fair a cause. Their debate grew heated; the Fox, shamed by the reminder that he owed Bergon’s very life to Cazaril, took to avoiding Cazaril’s petitions in a way that reminded Cazaril forcibly of Orico.
Cazaril received Iselle’s first ciphered letter, via the relay of couriers from the Daughter’s Order that he had set up on their outbound route. It had been penned just four days after he had left Cardegoss, and was brief, simply confirming that Teidez’s funeral rites had taken place without incident, and that Iselle would leave the capital that afternoon with his cortege for Valenda and the interment. She noted, with obvious relief, Our prayers were answered—the sacred animals showed the Son of Autumn has taken him up after all. I pray he will find ease in the god’s good company. She added, My eldest brother lives, and has back sight in one eye. But he remains very swollen. He stays at home, abed. More chillingly, she reported: Our enemy has set two of his nieces as ladies-in-waiting in my household. I will not be able to write often. The Lady speed your embassy.
He looked in vain for a postscript from Betriz, nearly missing it till he turned the paper over. Minute numbers in her distinctive hand lay half-hidden beneath the cracked wax of the seal itself. He scraped at the residue with his thumbnail. The brief notation thus revealed led him to a page toward the back of the book, one of Ordol’s most lyrical prayers: a passionate plea for the safety of a beloved one who traveled far from home. How many years—decades—had it been since someone far away had prayed just for him? Cazaril wasn’t even sure if this had been meant for his eyes, or only for those of the gods, but he touched the tiny cipher secretly to the five sacred points, lingering a little on his lips, before leaving his chamber to seek Bergon.
He shared the other side of the letter with the royse, who studied it, and the code system, with fascination. Cazaril composed a brief note telling of the success of his mission, and Bergon, his tongue clamped between his teeth, laboriously ciphered out a letter in his own hand to go to his new betrothed along with it.
Cazaril counted days in his head. It was impossible that dy Jironal not have spies in the court of Ibra. Sooner or later, Cazaril’s appearance there must be reported back to Cardegoss. How soon? Would dy Jironal guess that Cazaril’s negotiations on Iselle’s behalf had prospered so stunningly? Would he seize the royesse’s person, would he calculate Cazaril’s next move, would he try to intercept Bergon in Chalion?
After several days of the deadlock over the royse’s safety, Cazaril, in a burst of genius, sent Bergon in to argue his own case. This was an envoy the Fox could not evade, not even in his private chambers. Bergon was young and energetic, his imagination passionately engaged, and the Fox was old and tired. Worse, or perhaps, from Cazaril’s point of view, better, a town in South Ibra of the late Heir’s party rose in arms about some failure of treaty, and the Fox was forced to muster men to ride out to pacify it again. Frenzied with the dilemma, torn between his great hopes and his icy fears for his sole surviving son, the Fox threw the resolution back upon Bergon and his coterie.
Resolution, Cazaril was discovering, was one thing Bergon did not lack. The royse quickly endorsed Cazaril’s scheme to travel lightly and in disguise across the hostile country between the Ibran border and Valenda. For escort Bergon chose, besides Cazaril and the dy Guras, only three close companions: two young Ibran lords, dy Tagille and dy Cembuer, and the only slightly older March dy Sould.
The enthusiastic dy Tagille proposed that they travel as a party of Ibran merchants bound for Cardegoss. Cazaril did insist that all the men, noble or humble, who rode with the royse be experienced in arms. The group assembled within a day of Bergon’s decision, in what Cazaril prayed was secrecy, at one of dy Tagille’s manors outside Zagosur. It was not, Cazaril discovered, so small a company as all that; with servants, it came to over a dozen mounted men and a baggage train of half a dozen mules. In addition the servants led four fine matched white Ibran mountain ponies meant as a gift for Bergon’s betrothed, in the meantime doubling as spare mounts.
They started off in high spirits; the companions obviously thought it a high and noble adventure. Bergon was more sober and thoughtful, which pleased Cazaril, who felt as though he were leading a party of children into caverns of madness. But at least in Bergon’s case, not blindly. Which was better than the gods had done for him, Cazaril reflected darkly. He wondered if the curse could be tricking him, leading them all into war and not out of it. Dy Jironal hadn’t started out so corrupt, either.
Being limited to the speed of the slowest pack mule, the pace was not so painful as the race to Zagosur had been. The climb up from the coast to the base of the Bastard’s Teeth took four full days. Another letter from Iselle caught up with Cazaril there, this one written some fourteen days after he’d departed Cardegoss. She reported Teidez buried with due ceremony in Valenda, and her success in her ploy of remaining there, extending her visit to her bereaved mother and grandmother. Dy Jironal had been forced to return to Cardegoss by reports of Orico’s worsening ill health. Unfortunately, he had left behind not only his female spies, but also several companies of soldiers to guard Chalion’s new Heiress. I’m taking thought what to do about them, Iselle reported, a turn of phrase that brought up the hairs on the back of Cazaril’s neck. She also included a private letter to Bergon, which Cazaril passed along unopened. Bergon didn’t share its contents, but he smiled freque
ntly over Ordol’s pages as he deciphered it, head bent close to the candles in their stuffy inn chamber.
More encouragingly, the Provincara had included a letter of her own, declaring that Iselle had received private promises of support for the Ibran marriage not only from her uncle the provincar of Baocia, but three other provincars as well. Bergon would have defenders, when he arrived.
When Cazaril showed this note to Bergon, the royse nodded decisively. “Good. We go on.”
They suffered a check nonetheless here, when discouraged travelers coming back down the road to their inn that night reported the pass blocked with new snow. Consulting the map and his memory, Cazaril led the company instead a day’s ride to the north, to a higher and less frequented pass still reported clear. The reports proved correct, but two horses strained their hocks on the climb. As they neared the divide, the March dy Sould, who claimed himself more comfortable on the deck of a ship than the back of a horse, and who had been growing quieter and quieter all morning, suddenly leaned over the side of his saddle and vomited.
The company bunched to a wheezing halt on the trail, while Cazaril, Bergon, and Ferda consulted, and the usually witty dy Sould mumbled embarrassed and disturbingly muddled apologies and protests.
“Should we stop and build a fire, and try to warm him?” the royse asked in worry, staring around the desolate slopes.
Cazaril, himself standing half-bent-over, replied, “He’s dazed as a man in a high fever, but he’s not hot. He’s seacoast-bred. I think this is not an infection, but rather a sickness that sometimes overcomes lowlanders in the heights. In either case, it will be better to care for him down out of this miserable rocky wilderness.”
Ferda, eyeing him sideways, asked, “How are you doing, my lord?”
Bergon, too, frowned at him in concern.
“Nothing that stopping and sitting down here will improve. Let’s push on.”
They mounted again, Bergon riding near to dy Sould when the trail permitted. The sick man clung to his saddle with grim determination. Within half an hour, Foix gave a thin and breathless whoop, and pointed to the cairn of rocks that marked the Ibra-Chalion border. The company cheered, and paused briefly to add their stones. They began the descent, steeper even than the climb. Dy Sould grew no worse, reassuring Cazaril of his diagnosis. Cazaril grew no better, but then, he didn’t expect to.
In the afternoon, they came over the lower lip of a barren vale and dropped into a thick pine wood. The air seemed richer here, even if only with the sharp delicious scent of the pines, and the bed of needles underfoot cushioned the horses’ sore feet. The sighing trees sheltered them all from the wind’s prying fingers. As they rounded a curve, Cazaril’s ears picked up the muffled thump of trotting hooves from the path ahead, the first fellow traveler they had encountered all day; just one rider, though, so no danger to their number.
The rider was a grizzled man with fierce bushy eyebrows and beard, dressed in stained leathers. He hailed them and, a little to Cazaril’s surprise, pulled up his shaggy horse across their path.
“I am castle warder to the Castillar dy Zavar. We saw your company coming down the vale, when the clouds broke. My lord sends me to warn you, there is a storm blowing up the valley. He invites you to shelter with him till the worst is past.”
Dy Tagille greeted this offer of hospitality with delight. Bergon dropped back and lowered his voice to Cazaril. “Do you think we ought, Caz?”
“I’m not sure…” He tried to think if he’d ever heard of a Castillar dy Zavar.
Bergon glanced at his friend dy Sould, drooping over his pommel. “I’d give much to get him indoors. We are many, and armed.”
Cazaril allowed, “We’d not make good speed in a blizzard, besides the risk of losing the trail.”
The grizzled castle warder called out, “Suit yourselves, gentlemen, but since it’s my job to collect the bodies from the ditches in this district come spring, I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d accept. The storm will blow through before morning, I’d guess.”
“Well, I’m glad we at least got over the pass before this broke. Yes,” decided Bergon. He raised his voice. “We thank you, sir, and do accept your lord’s kind offer!”
The grizzled man saluted, and nudged his horse back down the road. A mile farther on, he wheeled to the left and led them up a fainter trail through the tall, dark pines. The path dropped, then rose steeply for a time, zigzagging. The horses’ haunches bunched and surged, pushing them uphill. Away through the trees, Cazaril could hear the distant squabbling and cawing of a flock of crows, and was comforted in memory.
They broke out into the gray light upon a rocky spur. Perched on the outcrop rose a small and rather dilapidated fortress built of undressed native stone. An encouraging curl of smoke rose from its chimney.
They passed under a fieldstone arch into a courtyard paved with slates; a stable opened directly onto it, as well as a broad wooden portico over the doors leading into the main hall. Its margins were cluttered with tools, barrels, and odd trash. Curing deer hides were nailed up to the stable wall. Some tough-looking men, servants or grooms or guards or all three in this rough rural household, moved from the portico to help with the party’s horses and mules. But it was the nearly half dozen new ghosts, whirling frantically about the courtyard, that opened Cazaril’s eyes wide and stopped the breath in his throat.
That they were fresh, he could tell by their crisp gray outlines, still holding the forms they’d had in life: three men, a woman, and a weeping boy. The woman-shape pointed to the grizzled man. White fire streamed from her mouth, silent screams.
Cazaril jerked his horse back beside Bergon’s, leaned over, and muttered, “This is a trap. Look to your weapons. Pass the word.” Bergon fell back beside dy Tagille, who in turn bent to speak quietly to a pair of the party’s grooms. Cazaril smiled in dissimulation, and sidled his horse over to Foix’s, where he held up his hand before his mouth as if sharing a jest, and repeated the warning. Foix smiled blandly and nodded. His eyes darted around the courtyard, counting up the odds, as he leaned toward his brother.
The odds did not seem ill, but for that rangy lout up on the wooden perch beside the gate, leaning against the inner wall, a crossbow dangling, as if casually, from his hand. Except that it was cocked. Cazaril maneuvered back by Bergon, putting himself and his horse between the royse and the gate. “ ‘Ware bowman,” he breathed. “Duck under a mule.”
The ghosts were darting from place to place about the yard, pointing out concealed men behind the barrels and tools, shadowed in the stalls, and, apparently, waiting just inside the main door. Cazaril revised his opinion of the odds. The grizzled man motioned to one of his men, and the gate swung shut behind the party. Cazaril twisted in his saddle and dug his hand into his saddlebag. His fingers touched silk, then the smooth coolness of round beads; he had not pawned Dondo’s pearls in Zagosur because the price was disadvantageous there, so close to the source. He swept his hand up, drawing out the glistening rope of them in a grand gesture. As he swung the string around his head, he popped the cord with his thumb. Pearls spewed off the end of the line and bounced about the slate-paved court. The startled toughs laughed, and began to dive for them.
Cazaril dropped his arm, and shouted, “Now!”
The grizzled commander, who had apparently been just about to shout a similar order, was taken aback. Cazaril’s men drew steel first, falling upon the distracted enemy. Cazaril half fell out of his saddle just before a crossbow bolt thunked into it. His horse reared and bolted, and he scrambled to pull his own sword out of its scabbard.
Foix, bless the boy, had managed to get his own crossbow quietly unshipped before the chaos of shouting men and plunging horses struck. One of the male ghosts streaked past Cazaril’s inner eye, and pointed at an obscured shape dodging along the top of the portico. Cazaril tapped Foix’s arm, and shouted, “Up there!” Foix cocked and whirled just as a second bowman popped up; Cazaril could swear the frantic ghost trie
d to guide the quarrel. It entered the bowman’s right eye and dropped him instantly. Foix ducked and began recocking; the ratcheting mechanism whirred.
Cazaril, turning to seek an enemy, found one seeking him. From the main door, steel drawn, barged a startlingly familiar form: Ser dy Joal, dy Jironal’s stirrup-man, whom Cazaril had last seen in Cardegoss. Cazaril raised his sword just in time to deflect dy Joal’s first furious blow. His belly twinged, cramped, then knotted agonizingly as they circled briefly for advantage, and then dy Joal bore in.
The excruciating belly pain drained the strength from Cazaril’s arm, almost doubling him over; he barely beat off the next attack, and counterattack was suddenly out of the question. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the female ghost curl tightly in upon herself. She—or was that a pearl?—or both united, somehow slid under dy Joal’s boot. Dy Joal skidded violently and unexpectedly forward, flailing for balance. Cazaril’s point rammed through his throat and lodged briefly in the bones of his neck.
A hideous shock ran up Cazaril’s arm. Not just his belly but his whole body seemed to cramp, and his vision blurred and darkened. Within him, Dondo screamed in triumph. The death demon surged up like a whirling fire behind his eyes, eager and implacable. Cazaril convulsed, vomiting. In Cazaril’s uncontrolled recoil, his sword ripped out sideways; vessels spurted, and dy Joal collapsed at his feet in a welter of blood.
Cazaril found himself on his hands and knees on the icy slates, his sword, dropped from his nerveless hand, still ringing faintly. He was trembling all over so badly he could not stand up again. He spat bile from his watering mouth. On his sword’s point, as it lay on the stone, dy Joal’s wet blood steamed and smoked, blackening. Surges of nausea swept through his swollen and pulsing abdomen.
Inside him, Dondo wailed and howled in frustrated rage, slowly smothered again to silence. The demon settled back like a stalking cat on its belly, watchful and tense. Cazaril clenched and unclenched his hand, just to be sure he was still in possession of his own body.