Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [104]
AT LENGTH, A PAGE APPEARED TO COLLECT LISS FOR HER NOON EXPEDITION with the marchess. Sometime after that, a maid arrived with a luncheon for Ista on a tray, accompanied by a gentlewoman of the marchess’s retinue evidently detailed to keep Ista company. Ista bade the maid set the tray on the table and leave her, and ruthlessly dismissed the disappointed lady-in-waiting as well. As soon as their footsteps had faded outside, Ista slipped through the outer chamber and out the door. The sun, she noted grimly, shone down high and hot into the stone court, making black accent marks of the shadows. At the opposite end of the gallery, she knocked on Lord Illvin’s carved door.
It swung open. Goram’s rusty voice began, “Now, did you have that fool of a cook stew the meat softer today—” then died away. “Royina.” He gulped and ducked his head, but did not invite her inside.
“Good afternoon, Goram.” Ista lifted her hand and pressed the door wide. He gave way helplessly, looking frightened.
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. Ista’s eye summed the semblances with her first dream vision, but dismissed them abruptly from her attention when her second sight took in Goram.
His soul was bizarre in appearance, unlike any other that she had yet seen. It reminded her of nothing so much as a tattered cloth that had been splashed with vitriol, or eaten away by moths, until it hung together only by a few strained strings. She thought of the ragged bear. But Goram clearly was not presently demon-infested, nor was he dying. He isn’t well, though. Isn’t . . . quite right. She had to wrench her perception back to his gnarled physical surface.
“I wish to speak with your master when he wakes,” she told him.
“He, um, don’t always talk so’s you can make out anything.”
“That’s all right.”
The groom’s head drew in upon his shoulders in the turtle hunch again. “Lady Catti, she wouldn’t like it.”
“Did she chide you yesterday, after I left?” And how fiercely?
He nodded, looking at his feet.
“Well, she’s busy now. She has ridden out from the castle. You need not tell her I was here. When the servant brings Lord Illvin’s tray, take it and send him away, and no one will know.”
“Oh.”
He seemed to digest her words a moment, then nodded and shuffled backward, allowing her entry.
Lord Illvin lay upon the bed in his linen robe, his hair unbraided and brushed back as she had first seen it in her dream. Motionless as death, but not stripped of soul-stuff; yet neither was his soul centered and congruent like Liss’s, or even like tattered Goram’s. It was as though it were being forcibly pulled out from his heart, to stream away in that now-familiar line of white fire. The barest tint of it remained within the confines of his actual body.
Ista took a seat on a chest by the wall to Illvin’s right and studied that silent profile. “Will he wake soon?”
“Most likely.”
“Carry on as you usually do, then.”
Goram nodded nervously and pulled a stool and a small table up to the opposite side of the bed. He jumped up at a knock on the door. Ista leaned back out of view as he accepted a heavy tray covered with a linen towel and sent its bearer off. The manservant sounded relieved to be so dismissed. Goram settled down on his stool, his hands gripping each other, and stared at Lord Illvin. Silence settled thickly over the room.
The line of white fire gradually thinned. Drew down to the merest faint thread. Illvin’s body seemed to refill, his soul-stuff deeply dense to Ista’s second sight, but churning in complex agitation.
Illvin’s lips parted. Abruptly, his breath drew in, then huffed out. His eyes opened to stare wildly at the ceiling. He jerked suddenly upright, his hands covering his face.
“Goram? Goram!” Panic edged his voice.
“Here, m’lord!” said Goram anxiously.
“Ah. There y’are.” Illvin’s speech was slurred. His shoulders slumped. His rubbed his face, dropped his hands to the coverlet, stared at