Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [171]
“I am thinking . . . that by your testimony Arhys appears to be immune to sorcery, but sorcerers do not appear to be immune to steel. As Cattilara proved upon poor Umerue. If Arhys could close with them, just them, and yet somehow avoid the other fifteen hundred Jokonans around Porifors . . .” He drew a breath, and wheeled. “Liss.”
She jerked upright. “Lord Illvin?”
“Go and find my lord brother, and ask him to attend upon us here. Fetch Foix, too, if he is to be found.”
She nodded, a bit wide-eyed, scrambled up, and scuffed rapidly down the tower’s turning stairs. Illvin stared out over Prince Sordso and Princess Joen’s camp as if memorizing every detail. Ista leaned uneasily by his side, studying that profile suddenly gone distant and cool.
He looked back and smiled down at her in apology. “I am seized by a thought. I fear you will find me a rather distractible man.”
It wasn’t how she would describe him, but she smiled briefly back in attempted reassurance.
All too soon, footsteps sounded on the stairs. Arhys emerged into the luminous twilight, followed by Liss and Foix. Arhys looked scarcely more corpselike than anyone else in Porifors at present, but his face was spared the usual smears of sweat. Foix’s stolidity masked a deep depletion. He had spent the afternoon clumsily trying to undo sorceries all over the castle, to little effect. Dy Cabon had named the effort fundamentally futile, for various theological reasons that no one stayed to listen to, and yet had begged Foix’s aid himself when faced with the rising demands of the sick.
“Arhys, come here,” said Illvin. “Look at this.” His brother joined him at the western parapet. “Five gods attest we know this ground. Royina Ista says there are but eighteen sorcerers in Joen’s pack altogether. A dozen lie in the front of the camp, along there . . .”—his hand swept in an arc—“six more in the command tents, a rather better guarded area, I suspect. One big circle could pass round them all, if it were rapid enough. How many sorcerers do you think you could excise with steel?”
Arhys’s brows rose. “As many as I could close with, I suppose. But I doubt they would just stand there while we galloped up to them. As soon as they thought to drop our horses, we’d be afoot.”
“What if we attacked in the dark? You said you see better in the dark these days than other men.”
“Hm.” Arhys’s gaze upon the grove intensified.
“Royina Ista.” Illvin turned urgently to her—and where was all that Sweet Ista now? “What happens when a leashed sorcerer is slain?”
Ista frowned. Surely the question was rhetorical. “You’ve seen it yourself. The demon, together with whatever pieces of its mount’s soul it has digested, jumps to whatever new host it can reach. The body dies. What the fate of the remaining parts of the person’s soul may be, I do not know.”
“And one other thing,” Illvin said, excitement leaking into his voice. “The leash is broken. Or at least—Cattilara’s demon broke from control at Umerue’s death. More: at that moment, the free demon became Joen’s rebellious enemy, dedicated to flight from her as fast as possible. How many demons could Joen suffer to have cut away from her array—jumping randomly into unprepared hosts, or even turning on her—before she was forced to retreat in disorder?”
“If she doesn’t have others in reserve, ready to harness like a fresh team of horses,” said Arhys.
“No,” said Ista slowly, “I don’t think she can. All must be there, tied in her net, or they will fly—away from each other if not from her. By Umerue’s testimony, it took Joen three years to develop this array, to bring each sorcerer-slave to some apex of carefully selected, stolen skills. Without another visit to whatever back door of hell her master demon can unlock, I doubt she can replace them. And all she’ll get at first is a spate of mindless, formless, ignorant elementals. We know she spills them, too; it cannot be a well-controlled process, not when dealing with the essence of disorder itself. Although . . . Cattilara’s demon fears recapture; if that is