Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [141]
“Perilous indeed. And, um . . .” His brow wrinkled. “Paradoxical.”
“I told all to Ias and Arvol, and we took counsel together. Arvol, afflicted by our weeping, volunteered to attempt the hero’s role. We hit upon drowning as the method, for men were known to come back from that death, sometimes. And it does not disfigure. Arvol studied it, collected tales, investigated victims both lost and saved. In a cavern beneath the Zangre, we set up the cask, the ropes, the winch. The altars to all the gods. Arvol let himself be stripped, bound, lowered upside down, until his struggles ceased, until the light of his soul went out to my inner eye.”
He began to speak; she held up her hand, to block the misunderstanding. “No. Not yet. We drew him out—pressed the water from his throat, pounded on his heart, cried out our prayers, until he choked and breathed again. And I could see the crack in the curse.
“We had planned the ritual three nights in succession. On the second night, all went the same, until his hair brushed the surface of the water, and he gasped out to stop, he could not bear it. He cried I was trying to assassinate him, for jealousy’s sake. Ias hesitated. I was shaken, sick in my stomach—but I let reason compel me. It was Arvol’s own chosen method, it had worked once . . . I wailed for fear for my children, and for the frustration of coming so close, to miss saving them by a handbreadth. For rage at his slander. And for raising my hopes so high upon his pride, then dashing them so low upon his frailty.” She added simply, “I’d believed in his account of himself, you see.”
In the night, in some hollow below the castle walls, insects sang, a thin, high keening. It was the only sound. Arhys had forgotten to breathe. His body, perhaps, was losing the habit. She wondered how long it would take him to notice.
“When we drew him out the second time, he was dead indeed, and not all our tears and prayers, regrets and recriminations, and oh, there were many of those last, brought him back again. Ias half decided, later, that Arvol’s accusation of jealousy was true; half the time, I agreed myself. The fault was . . . Ias’s, for weakness, and mine, for impatience and unwisdom. For if Ias had stood against me, I would have yielded, or if I had listened to my heart and not my head, and allowed Arvol more time, who is to say that after another day, or week, or month, he might have recovered his nerve? I’ll never know, now. The gods forsook me. The curse remained, unbroken, worse in its effects than ever. Until another generation threw up another man, more fitted to lift it from the world.” She drew breath. “And that is how I came to murder your father. If you really want to know.”
He was silent for a long time, remembered to inhale, and said, “Lady, I think this is not a confession. This is an indictment.”
She rocked back. “Of Arvol? Yes,” she said slowly, “that, too. If he had never volunteered, I’d have thought no less of him. If he had died on the first attempt, well, I would have thought the task beyond any man, or my design mistaken. But to demonstrate the true possibility, and then fail . . . shattered my heart. It was not, I came later to learn, death by rote that the gods required. One cannot force another’s soul to grow wide enough to admit a god to the world, but that dilation, not the mere dying, was what was wanted. Arvol dy Lutez was a great man. But . . . not quite great enough.”
He stared into the darkness. The torch had almost burned out, though at the top of the stairs Liss’s candle still glowed. She sat with her chin propped in her hands, eyelids drooping; the page had fallen asleep, curled up against her skirts.
“If my father had lived,” he said at last, “do you think he would ever have called me to his side?”
“If he had wrenched open his soul wide enough to succeed, I think it would thereafter have been more than wide enough to encompass you. Those who have admitted a god do not shrink