Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [117]
“Goram will signal by opening the door when he’s ready,” Liss reported. She was subdued, still unsettled by yesterday’s evil wonders and increasingly worried for Foix, for all that Ista had assured her that he must be in the hands of the archdivine of Maradi by now. Liss had been more consoled by Ista’s pointing out that Lady Cattilara had hosted a more powerful demon than Foix’s for over two months without visible deterioration. Ista only wished her own heart could share in the reassurance she ladled out.
At last the carved door on the gallery opposite swung open, and Liss escorted Ista across.
Illvin was sitting up in bed, dressed in tunic and trousers, hair brushed back and tied at his nape.
“Royina,” he said, and bowed his head. He looked both wary and shocked. Goram or Liss or both had presumably finally informed him of Ista’s rank and identity, in the little time since he had returned to consciousness. “I’m sorry. I swear I prayed for help, not for you!”
His speech was slurred again. Ista was reminded that while she’d had a day to digest the developments, Illvin had only been granted an hour. She sighed, went to his bedside, and stole the white fire from the lower half of his body to reinforce the upper. He blinked and gulped.
“It’s not that—I didn’t mean to insult . . .” His words trailed off in embarrassed confusion, not slurred now, just mumbled. He attempted to shift his legs, failed, and eyed them with misgiving.
“I suspect,” she said, “that royina is not the capacity in which I was called here. The gods do not measure rank as we do. A royina and a chambermaid likely look much the same, from their perspective.”
“You must admit, though, chambermaids are more numerous.”
She smiled bleakly. “I seem to have a calling. It is not by my choice. The gods appear attracted to me. Like flies to blood.”
He waved one weakened hand in protest at this metaphor. “I confess, I have never thought of the gods as flies.”
“Neither have I, really.” She remembered staring into those dark infinities. “But dwelling on their real nature hurts my . . . reason, I suppose. Saps my nerve.”
“Perhaps the gods know what they are about. How did you know what I dreamed? I saw you three times, when I waked in my dreaming. Twice, you shone with an uncanny light.”
“I dreamed those dreams, too.”
“Even the third one?”
“Yes.” No dream, that, but she was abashed by that rash kiss. Though after Cattilara’s performance, it had seemed such a small self-indulgence . . .
He cleared his throat. “My apologies, Royina.”
“What for?”
“Ah . . .” He glanced at her lips, and away. “Nothing.”
She tried not to think about the taste of his reviving mouth. Goram dragged the somewhat battered chair to Illvin’s bedside for her, and put out the stool at the bed’s foot for Liss, before retreating to stand at a hunched sort of attention by the far wall. Ista and Illvin were left staring at one another in equal, she was sure, bafflement.
“Supposing,” he began again, “that you are not here by chance, but by the prayers of, well”—he cleared his throat in embarrassment—“someone—it must be to solve this tangle. Yes?”
“Say rather, uncover it. Its solution eludes me.”
“I thought you had agency over Catti’s demon. Will you not banish it?”
“I don’t know how,” she admitted uneasily. “The Bastard has given me my second sight—given me back, I should say, my second sight, for this is not the first time the gods have troubled me. But the god gave me no instructions, unless they are contained in another man I saw in my dreams.” And vice versa. Upon consideration . . . was dy Cabon’s appearance, on the heels of the Bastard’s mysterious second kiss, some sort of intimation of just that? “The god sent me a spiritual conductor, Learned dy Cabon, and I dearly desire his counsel in this before I proceed. He has studied something, I believe, about how demons are properly dispatched back to their Master. I’m certain he is meant to be here. But I have lost him on the road,