Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [121]
“Who were your Roknari masters?”
He shook his head. “Don’t remember them, much.”
“Ships? Were you ever on ships?”
“Don’t think so. Horses, yes. There were horses.”
Illvin put in, “We’ve talked before about what he could remember, when I was trying to find out his family. Because he must have been a prisoner for several years, if it was from the time the prince of Borasnen first attempted the fortress of Gotorget, two years before it fell. I think from some things Goram has said that must have been the campaign he was in. But he doesn’t remember his captivity either, much. That was why I thought his brains might have been baked by a fever, perhaps just before he came my way.”
“Goram, can you remember what has happened to you since Lord Illvin ransomed you?” asked Ista.
“Oh, aye. That don’t hurt.”
“Can you remember anything at all from just before Lord Illvin bought you out?”
Goram shook his head. “There was a dark place. I liked it because it was cool. Stank, though.”
“Wits and memories eaten out, the demon jumped, and yet—not dead,” mused Ista. “Abandoning a live mount is not easy for a demon, I gather from dy Cabon; they get all tangled together somehow. Killing the person forces the demon out. Like Umerue. Or like the Quadrene burnings.”
“Don’t burn me!” cried Goram. He shrank down smaller, almost crouching, and stared in dismay at his own chest
“No one will burn you,” Illvin said firmly. “Not in Chalion, in any case, and now there is no need, because she says the demon is gone. All gone. Right?” He shot Ista a compelling glare.
“Very gone.” And most of Goram with it, it seemed. She wondered if he had been a servant, before—or something more.
“Hamavik . . .” murmured Illvin. “How suggestive. Both Goram and Princess Umerue were there at the same time. Could this . . . damage of Goram’s have any relation to Umerue’s demon?”
It made an enticing sort of connection. And yet . . . “Catti’s demon didn’t feel as if it had been dining on soldiers. It felt . . . I’m not sure how to put this. Too womanly. I suppose we can try to get information out of it again. I don’t think the way it carried on here yesterday was any more usual for a demon than for a person. Or sorcerers would be far more conspicuous.”
Liss, Ista noted, was looking most disturbed. Was she seeing a future Foix in Goram’s slack, timid, bewildered face? Where was the boy? Ista wasn’t desperate enough to pray yet, considering her feelings about prayer, but she thought she might become so if this hideous uncertainty went on much longer.
Ista continued, “Learned dy Cabon told me that demons were very rare, usually—but not these past few years. That the Temple had not seen an outbreak like this since RoyaFonsa’s day, fifty years gone. I cannot imagine what rip in the Bastard’s hell can be leaking them back into the world in such numbers, but that’s what I am beginning to picture.”
“Fonsa’s day.” Illvin’s words were starting to slur. “Strange.”
“Your time is almost up,” Ista said, eyeing the thickening white rope with disfavor. “I can portion you some more.”
“You said Arhys would start to rot, though,” Illvin objected muzzily. “High summer. Can’t have . . . bits of him falling off into his soup, can we now . . . ?” His voice was fading. He roused himself in a spasm of despair. “No! There must be another way! Have to find another way! Lady—come again . . . ?”
“Yes,” she said. On the reassurance, he released his grip on the edge of his counterpane and slid down. His face emptied once more into waxen stillness.
ISTA KEPT TO HER CHAMBERS AGAIN THAT DAY, WAITING IMPATIENTLY for the sun to run its course and rise again. She penned her new letters to Cardegoss and, when the sun dropped, paced the stone courtyard until even Liss abandoned her side and sat on a bench to watch her circulate. By the following midmorning she was reduced to mentally composing another sharp letter to the provincar of Tolnoxo, though the first could barely have arrived yet, let alone been acted upon.
Rapid footsteps sounded on the stairs outside;