Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [114]
“Hm,” said Ista. She didn’t greatly trust Cattilara, but this assertion could well be true.
“Tie her to the chair,” Liss suggested laconically from her place by the wall. Ista looked over her shoulder at the girl; Liss raised her eyebrows and shrugged. She kept a detached posture, but her eyes were wide and fascinated, as if she were watching a play and wanted to hear the next act.
“You don’t understand,” said Cattilara. “It won’t want to go back in, afterward.”
“I will undertake to hold it,” said Ista.
Illvin frowned curiously at her. “How?”
“I don’t think you can,” said Cattilara.
“It does. Or it would not fear me so, I think.”
“Oh.” Cattilara’s face screwed up in thought.
“I think,” said Arhys slowly, “this prisoner’s interrogation could be a most important one. It touches on the defense of Porifors. Will you dare it, dear Catti—for me?”
She sniffed, frowned, set her teeth.
“I know you have the courage,” he added, watching her.
“Oh—very well!” She made a face and climbed to her feet. “But I don’t think this is going to work.”
The young marchess watched with dismay as Goram, with Liss’s assistance, dragged the half-paralyzed Arhys out of the chair to sit on the floor propped up against the side of the bed. Cattilara cooperated, though, plopping down in his vacated spot and laying her hands out on the wooden arms. Goram hastened to produce makeshift ties from Illvin’s stock of belts and sashes.
“Use the cloths,” Arhys advised anxiously. “So they will not cut into her skin.”
Ista glanced at the scabs circling her own wrists like bracelets.
“Tie my ankles, too,” Cattilara insisted. “Tighter.”
Goram was overcautious, under the march’s worried eye, but Liss finally achieved knots that Cattilara approved. The ties seemed more bundles than bindings by the time Liss finished.
Ista moved her stool over to face Cattilara, very conscious of Arhys’s strong, limp body laid out by her skirts. “Go ahead, then, Lady Cattilara. Release the demon, let it up.”
Cattilara’s eyes closed. Ista half closed hers, trying to see those inner boundaries with her inner eye. It was not so much a case of letting, it seemed, as driving. “Come out, you,” Cattilara muttered, sounding like a boy poking a badger out of its hole with a stick. “Up!”
A surge of invisible violet light—Ista summoned all her sensitivity. On the surface, Cattilara’s expression changed, the stiff anxiety giving way, briefly, to a languid smile; her tongue ran over her lips, lasciviously. She grimaced, as if stretching the muscles of her face in unaccustomed directions. The violet tinge flowed throughout her body, to the fingertips. Her breath drew in.
Her eyes snapped open, widening in terror at the sight of Ista. “Spare us, Shining One!” she shrieked. Everyone in the room flinched at the sharp cry.
She began to rock and yank at her bindings. “Let us up, untie us! We command you! Let us go, let us go!”
She stopped, and hung panting, then a sly look flashed in her face. She sank back, closed her eyes, opened them again, returning to that stiff, blinking anxiety. “As you see, it’s useless. The stupid thing won’t come out, even for me. Let me up.”
The violet tint, Ista noted, still filled Cattilara’s body from edge to edge. She waved back Liss, who had started forward with a disappointed look on her face. “No, the creature lies. It’s still right there.”
“Oh.” Liss returned to the wall.
Cattilara’s face changed again, dissolving into rage. “Let us go! You blockheads, you have no idea what you have brought down on Porifors!” She bucked and jerked with terrifying strength, rocking the chair. “Flee, flee! We must flee! All flee! Go while you can. She is coming. She is coming. Let us go, let us go—” Cattilara’s voice rose and broke in a wordless scream. The chair began to topple: Goram caught it and held it as it thumped and scraped.
The frenzied struggles did not diminish, though Cattilara grew scarlet with the effort, and her breath pumped in frightening rasps. Was the demon desperate enough to seek its escape