Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [132]
She added, “I told your brother to wear his mail.”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes.” His mouth set, his left hand going again to probe his elusively wounded shoulder. He stared down at his feet, absorbed in who-knew-what reflections. Ista wondered if his mind circled as dizzily as her own.
She drew a long breath. “Goram.”
He paused in his spooning. “Lady?”
“Were you ever in Rauma?”
He blinked in bewilderment. “Don’t know the place.”
“It’s a town in Ibra.”
He shook his head. “We were at war with Ibra, before. Weren’t we? I know I was in Hamavik,” he offered as if in compensation. “Lord Illvin found me there.”
“Your soul shows demon scars, dreadful ones. And yet . . . if you had been a sorcerer during your captivity, commanding the resources of a demon, you ought to have been able to escape, or otherwise improve your lot.”
Goram looked daunted, as though being chastised for some lapse.
Ista opened a palm to soothe him, and continued, “There are . . . too many demons about. As if some great outbreak had occurred, the divine told me, is that not so, Learned?”
Dy Cabon rubbed his chins. “It’s surely beginning to appear so.”
“Has the Temple mapped the sightings? Are they coming from one place, or from every place at once?”
A thoughtful look came over his suety face. “I have not heard from every place, but of the reports I have heard, there do seem to have been more toward the north, yes.”
“Hm.” Ista stretched her tight shoulders again. “Lord Illvin, dy Cabon has also told me that the divine of the Bastard in Rauma was a saint of his order, gifted with the ability to draw demons from their mounts and return them, somehow, miraculously, to the god. The Jokonan raiders slew her.”
Illvin breathed out through pursed lips. “That’s an unfortunate loss just now.”
“Yes. Else he would have hauled Foix straight to her, and not come here instead. But now I’m wondering if it may have been more than a mischance. When I was captive, riding in the Jokonan column’s baggage train, I saw a strange sight. A high-ranking officer, perhaps the commander himself, rode along tied to his saddle like a prisoner, or a fainting wounded man. His face was slack . . . he could not control his drooling, and he mumbled, without words, or sometimes cried out as if in fear, or wept. I thought perhaps a head blow had destroyed his reason, but he bore no bandages or bloodstains whatsoever. I now wonder, if I’d had my second sight then—what great gouges I might have seen within his soul.”
Illvin blinked at the disturbing word-picture. His wits leapt ahead to the conclusion Ista had not yet stated aloud. “Might he have been another sorcerer in the service of Jokona, do you think? Commanding that column?”
“Perhaps. What if the saint of Rauma did not die without a fight, or wholly in vain? What if it was she who’d ripped his demonic powers out by the roots, even as she fell to common violence? At the start of a campaign, do we not burn the enemy’s crops, fill their wells, deny them their resources? I think a saint who could banish demons at will would be a powerful resource, against an enemy who commanded, perhaps, more such sorcerers. Maybe more than those two. Why Rauma, you asked me yesterday. What if the saint’s murder, which we took for an incidental evil of the raid, was instead its main purpose?”
“But demons do not readily work together,” objected dy Cabon. “One sorcerer, high in the Jokonan court, could do much damage, were he of evil bent. Well, or of loyal bent,” he conceded fairly. “To Jokona, that is. But to call up or command a legion of demons—that is the vocation of the Bastard alone. Unimaginable hubris in a man, and doubly so for a Quadrene. Also, such a perilous concentration of demons would generate chaos all around it.”
“War gathers on these borders,” said Ista. “A greater concentration of chaos I can hardly imagine.” She rubbed her forehead. “Lord Illvin, you have studied the court of Jokona, I suspect. Tell