Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [193]
Ista opened her jaws in a fierce grin, and took it in a gulp.
“Welcome to mine, Joen of Jokona,” said Ista. “I am the Mouth of Hell.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A WAVE OF LIGHT PASSED ALONG THE DEEP VIOLET CORD BETWEEN Joen and Ista, and its color and brilliance seemed to intensify. Was Joen’s first shocked impulse to strengthen her line? For a dizzy instant, Ista wondered who was the fisherwoman and who the fish. Then she felt the struggling, panicked young demon pass firmly into the Bastard’s hands, within her.
You have hooked a god, Joen. Now what shall you do? It was as though a galley had thrown a grappling hook onto a continent, thinking to tow it away.
“She bears the demon-god!” Joen screamed. “Kill her now!”
Yes. That would do . . .
Yet even as Joen cried out, time seemed to stretch in Ista’s perceptions like cold honey spinning off a spoon on a winter morning. She did not think it would stretch indefinitely.
Where should I begin? Ista asked the Presence within her.
Begin at the center, It replied. The rest will follow perforce.
She opened her material hands and let her spirit hands flow out along the violet cable. Enter Joen’s body through that channel. Wrap the dark mass, and pull it out toward her. It came resisting, surging and spitting, streaming corrosive violet shadows like water spilling. It burned her spirit hands like vitriol, and she gasped with the unexpected pain, which seemed to strike down into the center of her being and pulse back out to every extremity, the way the shock of a great wound reverberated in a body. The creature was very dense, and ugly. And large. And old, centuries old, rotten with time.
It is hideous.
Yes, said the god. Go on anyway. Finish Arhys’s ride.
Ista’s material hands were too sluggish to keep up with her streaming will. With her spirit hands alone, she combed back the strands of Joen’s soul tangled with the demon. Yet as fast as she did so, Joen flung out tendrils of cold white fire to wrap the demon round again and pull it back. The demon shrieked.
Let go, Ista urged. Let it go, and turn to some better task. Even now, you have a choice.
No! Joen’s mind returned. It is my gift, my great chance! No one shall wrest it from me, least of all you! You were so feckless, you couldn’t even keep your own son alive! Mine shall have his place; I have promised it!
Ista flinched, but the Presence sustained her. If she will not stay, she must come, It said. Continue.
Your wrongful attempts to impose order create yet vaster destruction, said Ista to Joen. You torment and demolish the very souls you most desire to make grow and love you. You possess truer gifts, stunted though they have been. Let go, find them instead, and live.
The whipping white fire was a visible scream of denial. In it Ista could discern not the faintest whisper of assent.
So.
Ista brought the great violet-black demon to her lips, and pulled it inward. It seemed to stretch and distort in its passage, its screeching becoming pain in her mouth, fire in her gullet. There are souls inside it, she realized. Many pieces of old souls, all digested and smeared together. Souls of the dead, and the long dead. What is to be done about them?
The dead belong to Us; sorting them is beyond your calling. The souls of the yet living, torn apart untimely while still trapped in the realm of matter, those are your care on Our behalf.
And this? Ista asked. Joen’s live white soul-fire, tangled with the demon, was passing into her now. It clawed and burned.
Comes out of your hands and into Mine.
This is not the quiet damnation of sundering. Indeed, the white fire seemed to howl, splitting Ista’s ears from within. Neither is this heaven’s healing.
No, said the Voice regretfully. This