Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [195]
No poets, though. None at all.
This dark piece of soul here is different, she realized, as one fragment began to flow through her fingers.
Yes, said the god. The man still lives, in the realm of matter.
Where? Is it . . . ? Should I attempt to . . . ?
Yes, if you think you can endure it. It will be uncomfortable.
Ista rolled up the patch of darkness and bundled it aside in her mind. It pulsed there, hot and thick. Somewhere off the edge of her material vision, the bronze-skinned Jokonan officer was lifting his sword, beginning to turn. A motion in black was Illvin, beginning to move with—no, after—him. Ista ignored it all and kept on combing. Sordso’s mouth was opening on a wordless howl, but not, she thought, of a man bereaved by his dispossession. It might be rage. It might be triumph. It might be madness.
Then the next cord, then . . . the last.
She glanced upward with both material and inner sight at the ashen Foix in his green tabard, standing among the startled Jokonan officers. The violet shadow within him was no longer bear-shaped, but distributed unevenly throughout his body. It seemed both to cringe from her, and stare in fascination.
She considered the final cord in her spirit hand. Lifted it to her lips. Bit it through.
Good, said the Voice.
Oh. Should I have asked?
You are my Door-ward in the realm of matter. A lord’s appointed porter does not run to him to ask if each beggar, whether in rags or silks, should be admitted or turned away, else he might as well stand at his gates himself. The porter is expected to use his judgment.
My judgment? She let the end of the cord go. It snapped back into Foix, and he was free. Or . . . whatever Foix was now, was free.
Foix’s face flickered; his lips parted, firmed. Then, after a bare second, stretched again in that horrible strained smile of perfect assent. False falseness; treachery turning in air. He is much less simple than he looks.
Ista was barely aware of the cries and turmoil erupting throughout the tent. The voices grew faint and far off, diminishing, the figures dimmer and dimmer. She turned to follow the entrancing Voice.
SHE SEEMED TO COME TO THE DOOR OF HERSELF, AND LOOK through. An overwhelming impression of color and beauty, pattern and complexity, music and song, all endlessly elaborated, bewildered her senses. She wondered how confusing the world looked to a newborn infant, who had neither names for what she saw nor even the concept of names. The child began, Ista supposed, with her mother’s face and breast, and from there worked outward—and in a lifetime could not come to the end of it all.
This is a world greater and stranger than the one of matter that gave my soul birth, and even the world of matter was beyond my comprehension. How now shall I begin?
Well, Ista, said the Voice. Do you stay or go? You cannot hang forever in My doorway like a cat, you know.
I have not words for this. I would see Your face.
Abruptly, she was standing in an airy room, very like a chamber in Porifors. She quickly glanced down, and was relieved to discover she was granted not only a body, healed and light and free of pain, but clothes as well—much as she had been wearing but cleansed of stains and mended of rips. She looked up, and rocked back.
This time, He wore Illvin’s body and face. It was a healthy, full-fleshed version, if still tall and lean. His courtier’s garb was silver embroidered on white, his baldric silk, his sword hilt and signet ring gleaming.