Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [184]
Ista twisted around. Cattilara was on her feet, her bloody robe falling wide about her. Her eyes were huge, her mouth open. The demon light within her had expanded to the margins of her body, and pulsed violently.
“The demon is ascendant!” Ista cried. “It is taking her. Seize her, do not let her run!”
Goram, closest, attempted to take her arm. A violet light appeared in her palm, and she shoved it toward him. He fell, retching. Ista staggered toward her, stepping between her and the opening of the stairs. Cattilara started forward, then shied away, her hands raised as if to shield her eyes. She looked around frantically. Her knees bunched, and she lunged for the wall.
Liss sprang forward and grabbed her ankle. She twisted, snarling, and yanked at Liss’s hair. Illvin danced forward, hesitated for an instant of calculation, and clipped her precisely across the side of the head. She flipped backward, half-stunned.
Ista tottered over and fell to her knees beside her. She seemed to see the demon like a tumor spreading tendrils throughout Cattilara’s body. Winding like a parasitical vine around the tree of her spirit, sapping strength, and life, and light. Stealing the high complexities of personality, language, knowledge, and memory that it could not, in the fundamental disorder of its nature, ever make for itself.
Oh. Now I see how to do this.
She reached out with her spirit hands and lifted the demon, trailing recoiling tendrils, from Cattilara’s soul. It came unwillingly, flopping in panic like some sea creature drawn out of the water. Ista held out a material hand, fingers spread for a screen, and pushed back the trailing shreds of Cattilara’s soul, like carding wool, until only the demon was left in her hand. She held it up dubiously before her face.
Yes, said the Voice. That’s right. Go ahead.
She shrugged, popped the demon in her mouth, and swallowed it.
“Now what? Are You going to extend this metaphor to its logical conclusion? It would be just like You, I think.”
I shall spare you that, sweet Ista, said the Voice, highly amused. But I do like your vile sense of humor. I think we shall get along well, don’t you?
There was no cranny in her armored spirit for the demon to wedge itself within, to clutch, to hold; and it wasn’t only that she was filled by the god. She felt the demon, knotted up in terror, pass out the other side of her soul. Into the realm of the spirit. Into the hands of the god its Master. Gone.
“What will happen to the pieces of the other souls who are tangled up in it?” she asked in worry. But the Voice had vanished again or, at least, didn’t choose to answer.
Cattilara was crouched on the tower platform, panting and hiccuping in little short sobs.
Illvin cleared his throat apologetically, and shook out his hand. “The demon tried to fling you to your death, and its freedom,” he told her.
She stared up at him with a ravaged face. In a ragged voice she said, “I know. I wish it had succeeded.”
Ista motioned the sewing woman, Goram, and Liss to her. “Get her to a bed, a real bed, and call her women to her. Find her what comforts this castle can yet yield. Don’t let her be left alone. I’ll come to her when I can.” She saw them down the spiral stairs, Cattilara, weary beyond weeping, leaning on the sewing woman and shrugging away from Liss.
Ista turned back to find Illvin and dy Cabon slumping worriedly on the eastern parapet, staring down at the Jokonan camp in the growing light. It roiled with activity, half hidden beneath the trees. Wisps of smoke still rose from the tents that had been burned. A stray saddled horse trotted away from a man trying to catch it; his Roknari curses carried faintly through the moist dawn air. Ista craned her neck in hope, but it did not appear to be Illvin’s red stallion.
“So what has happened, Royina?” asked dy Cabon, gazing down in perplexity. “Have we won or lost?”
“It was a very great hunt. Arhys slew seven sorcerers before they brought him down. He stumbled at the eighth. I think it was a sorceress. I wonder if she was young