Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [208]
“My duties today are relentless,” Illvin murmured, “but later I must discuss with you the matter of an appropriate guard company for this traveling court of yours.”
“Indeed,” she returned. “And other appointments as well.”
“And callings.”
“Those, too.”
PEJAR AND HIS TWO SLAIN COMRADES OF THE DAUGHTER’S ORDER were buried outside the walls of Porifors that afternoon. Ista and all her company attended upon them. Learned dy Cabon had come to Ista in distress, earlier, for while he might officiate—none better, in Ista’s view—he had no sacred animals to sign the gods’ acceptances; those belonging to Porifors’s own temple were overburdened and reported close to frenzied with the day’s demands.
“Learned,” she had chided him gently. “We do not need the animals. We have me.”
“Ah,” he said, rocking back. “Oh. As you are made saint again—of course.”
She knelt, now, in the sunlight by each wrapped form in turn, laid her hand upon its brow, and prayed for their signs. In rites at major temples like the one in Cardegoss, each order proffered a sacred animal, appropriate in color and sex to the god or goddess it represented, with an acolyte-groom to handle it. The creatures were led in turn to the bier, and by their behavior the divines interpreted to the mourners which god had taken in their lost one’s soul, and therefore where to direct their prayers—and, not incidentally, upon which order’s altar to lay their more material offerings. The rite brought consolation to the living, support to the Temple, and occasionally some surprises.
She had often wondered what the animals trained to this duty felt. She was relieved when she experienced no holy hallucinations: merely a silent certainty. Pejar and the first of his comrades were taken up by the Daughter of Spring, Whom they had served so faithfully, she felt at once, and so she reported. The last man, she discovered, was different.
“Curious,” she said to Ferda and Foix. “The Father of Winter has taken Laonin. I wonder if it is for the sake of his courage on Arhys’s ride—or if he has a child somewhere? He was not married, was he?”
“Um, no,” said Ferda. He glanced at dy Cabon’s whites and swallowed whatever embarrassment he might have felt on the dead dedicat’s behalf.
Ista rose from the graveside. “Then I charge you to find out, and see that the child, if it lives, is cared for. I will write to Holy General dy Yarrin as well. It shall have a purse from me to maintain its infancy, and a claim on a place in my household when it comes of age, if it desires.”
“Yes, Royina,” said Ferda. Surreptitiously, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
Ista nodded satisfaction. As a conscientious officer, he would not fail in this task, she was sure.
The shaded grove reserved for the castle’s dead overlooked the pleasant river; many graves were still being dug, and other grieving people, comrades and relatives of the slain, had watched their company’s rites. What rumors were circulating about her in Porifors Ista hardly knew, but within the hour humble petitioners had descended upon dy Cabon to beg the royal saint’s indulgence for their dead.
As a result Ista spent the day until darkness fell being conducted by dy Cabon and Liss from graveside to graveside, reporting the fates of souls. There were too many, but the task was not so endless as the devastation Joen’s sorcerers would have left across Chalion if not stopped by Porifors’s sacrifices. Ista refused none who asked her aid, for most surely, these had not refused her. Every mourner seemed to have some story to tell her of their dead; not, she realized at length, in the expectation that she would do anything, except listen. Attend. Royina, see this man; make him real in your mind, as in ours; for in the realm of matter, he lives now only in our memories. She listened till her ears and heart both ached.
Returning to her brother’s tents after nightfall, she fell onto her cot like a corpse herself. As the night drew on, she told over the names, faces, fragments of men’s lives