Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [149]
“You take care of every duty. No matter how distasteful.” Illvin smiled bleakly. “You have always sought to take a father’s care of us all. Is there any doubt which god waits to take you up? But let Him wait a little longer, I say.” He glanced aside at Ista.
But no god awaits him, Ista thought. That’s what sundered means.
Arhys shrugged. “The days gnaw at me as rats gnaw a corpse. I can feel it now, more and more. I have already overstayed, most grievously. Royina . . .” His eyes upon her were uncomfortably penetrating. “Can you release me? Is that why you were tumbled down here?”
Ista hesitated. “I scarcely know what I can do and what I cannot. If I am meant to channel miracles, that one would not be my first choice. Yet it is the nature of miracles that their human conduit may not choose them, except to cry them yes or no. It is only demon sorcery that we may bend to our own wills. No one bends a god.”
“And yet,” said Illvin thoughtfully, “the Bastard is half a demon himself, they say. I think his nature is not wholly as the rest of his family’s. Perhaps his miracles are not either?”
Ista frowned in confusion. “I . . . don’t know. He seemed just as much beyond me in my dream as his Mother did in my vision of her, nigh on twenty years ago. In any case, I have only tried to rearrange the strength that flows among you three. I have not tried to break the bindings beneath, or force the demon to do so against its mistress’s will, though it is clear enough that it would abandon all and fly if it could.”
“Try now,” said Arhys.
Both Ista and Illvin made simultaneous noises of protest, and glanced at each other.
“Because if you cannot do this, I must also know,” said Arhys patiently.
“But—there is no way to test it but to do it. And then I would not know how to undo it.”
“I did not suggest that you then seek to undo it.”
“I would fear to leave you damned.”
“More than I am now?”
Ista looked away, discomfited. She read a soul-deep exhaustion in his face; as if he grew hourly less loath to end his travails, even into the dwindling silence of nothingness. “But—what if this is not the task I was sent for? What if I am wrong in my reasoning—again? I should have been ecstatic if it had been given me to heal you. I do not wish to murder another dy Lutez.”
“You did once.”
“Yes, but not by sorcery. By drowning. The method would not work on you. You haven’t taken a breath in the last fifteen minutes.”
“Oh. Yes.” He looked embarrassed and made an effort to inhale.
Illvin’s eyes had grown wide. “What tale is this?”
Ista glanced at him, gritted her teeth, and said, “Arvol dy Lutez did not die in the Zangre under questioning. Ias and I drowned him by mistake in the course of an attempt among the three of us to call down a miracle for Chalion’s sake. The treason accusation was entirely false.” Well. That was certainly getting more succinct with practice.
Illvin’s mouth hung open for a moment longer. He finally said, “Ah. I always did think that treason charge was oddly handled.”
“The rite failed because Arvol’s courage failed.” She stopped. Then blurted out, “And yet I might have saved the hour even at the last, if I could have called down a miracle of healing. Even as he lay drowned dead at our feet. The Mother, the very goddess of remedy, stood at my right hand, just around some . . . corner of perception. If my soul had not been so knotted with rage and fear and grief that there was no room in it for any god to enter.” Three prior confessions had all evaded this codicil, she realized. She glanced aside again at Illvin. “Or if I had loved him instead of hated him. Or if—I don’t know.”
Illvin cleared his throat. “Most people fail to work miracles most of the time. Such a dereliction scarcely needs accounting for.”
“Mine does. I was called.” She brooded, as the wagon creaked along. Now I am called again. But what for? She glanced up at Arhys. “I wonder how our lives would