Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [118]
He grew still. “A ghost? Are you sure?”
“I saw it, when the spell was interrupted here yesterday. Nothing . . . happened, and it should have. There is a white roaring, when the doors of a soul are opened by death to the gods; it is a huge event. Damnation is but a silence, a slow freezing.” She rubbed her tired eyes. “And more—even if I knew how he might find his way to his god, I am by no means sure that Arhys can convince his wife to release him. Yet if he does not persuade her, who else could? Not me, I fear. And even if she would let him go . . . the demon she has contracted seems skilled and powerful. If she no longer is sustained by the overmastering will to keep Arhys seeming-alive, if she collapses into grief—she will be very vulnerable to it.”
He vented a “Hm” of deepening doubt.
“Has she much strength of character, in your observation?”
He frowned. “I would not have said so, before this. Lovely girl, adores Arhys, but I’d swear that if she held up a lighted candle beside one pretty ear, I could blow it out through the other. Arhys doesn’t seem to mind.” He smiled wryly. “Although if such beauty had worshipped me so ardently, my opinion of her wits might well have risen higher upon the swelling of my head, or whatever, too. Yet—she resisted the cloud of Umerue’s sorcery, and I . . . did not.”
“I suspect Umerue underestimated her. And that’s another thing,” said Ista. “How could a princess of Jokona, a devout Quadrene, come by a demon in the first place? And keep it concealed, or otherwise evade accusation? They burn sorcerers there, though how the Quadrene divines keep the demon from jumping to another through the flames, I don’t know. They must do something to tie it to its mount before dispatching them both.”
“Yes, they do. It involves much ceremony and prayer. An ugly business; worse, it doesn’t always work.” He hesitated. “Catti said the sorceress was sent.”
“By whom? The prince her brother? Assuming she had been dumped back into his household by her last late husband’s heirs.”
“I believe she was, yes. But . . . it’s hard to picture Sordso the Sot dabbling in demons for the sake of Jokona.”
“Sordso the Sot? Is that what the men of Caribastos call the young prince?”
“That’s what everybody calls him, on both sides of the border. He chose to spend the hiatus between his father’s death and the end of his mother’s regency not in studying statecraft or warfare, but in wine parties and versifying. He’s actually quite a pretty poet, in a self-consciously melancholy sort of vein, judging by the samples I’ve heard. We all hoped he would pursue the calling, which looked to be more rewarding for him than a prince’s trade.” He grinned briefly. “My lord dy Caribastos would be glad to give him a pension and a palace, and take the burdens of government off his narrow shoulders.”
“It seems the prince is not so inattentive now. It was he who sent the raiding party into Ibra, which fled east from Rauma over the mountains and so encountered me. They had tally officers to account the prince’s fifth. Did Liss tell you of this?”
“Only in brief.” He nodded to the riding girl, who nodded back in confirmation. He paused, his dark brows drawing down. “Rauma? Strange. Why Rauma?”
“I guessed that it was to encourage the Fox of Ibra to keep his troops at home, come the fall campaign, instead of sending them in support of his son against Visping.”
“Mm, could be. Rauma just seems very deep in Ibran territory to strike at so. Bad lines of retreat, as the raiders apparently found.”
“Lord Arhys mentioned that by his reckoning, of the three hundred men who left Jokona, only three returned.”
Illvin whistled. “Good for Arhys. Costly diversion for Sordso!”
“Except that they came very close to paying for all by carrying me off with them. But that could not have been part of their original plan. They didn’t even carry maps of Chalion.”
“I know the march of