Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [31]
Three days of riding had tired both people and animals; tomorrow both would rest here. A little elusive ease seemed to have crept in to Ista’s spirit—whether its source was sunlight, exercise, cheerful young company, or distance from Valenda, she hardly knew, but she was grateful for it. She slid her body under the feather quilt, finding the narrow bed more luxurious than many more ornate but less comfortable ones in royal castles, and fell asleep before Liss stopped rolling over in her truckle.
ISTA DREAMED, AND KNEW SHE WAS DREAMING.
She crossed a paved castle courtyard in a late-spring or early-summer noon. A stone-arched walk ran around the court’s edge, the fine alabaster pillars carved with a tracery of vines and flowers in the Roknari style. The sun shone down high and hot; the shadows were black accent marks at her feet. She climbed—no, floated—up the stone stairs at the end, leading up over the arched walk to a wooden gallery, and along it. At the far end, a room: she passed softly into it without opening the carved door, which seemed to part and close around her skin like water.
The room was dim and cool, but a grid of light fell through the shutters onto the woven rugs, making the muted colors briefly blaze. In the room, a bed; on the bed, a form. Ista drifted closer, like a ghost.
The form was a man, asleep or dead, but very pale and still. His long, lean body was dressed in an undyed linen robe, folded across his chest and bound at the waist with a linen belt. On his left breast, a patch of dark red blood seeped through the cloth.
Despite the wiry length of his frame the bones of his face were almost delicate: brow wide, jaw fine, chin somewhat pointed. His skin was unmarred by scar or blemish, but faint lines pressed across the forehead, framed the lips, fanned from the eyes. His dark, straight hair was brushed back from his forehead, the hairline high, receding; it flowed down over the pillow to his shoulders like a river of night, rippling with tiny gleams of moonlight from the silver threads. His brows were arched, winging; nose straight; lips parted.
Ista’s ghostly hands unbound the belt, folded back the linen robe. The hair trailing down his chest was sparse, until it thickened at his crotch. The bird that nested there was fine and fair, and Ista smiled. But the wound beneath his left breast gaped like a small, dark mouth. As she watched, blood began to well from it.
She pressed her hands over the dark slit to staunch the flow, but the red liquid oozed up between her white fingers, a sudden flood, washing across his chest, spreading in a scarlet tide across the sheets. His eyes flew open, he saw her, and he gasped.
Ista woke, shot up, pressed her knuckles to her mouth to stifle her cry. She expected to taste blood, hot and sticky, and was almost shocked not to. Her body was drenched in sweat. Her heart was hammering, and she was panting as though she had been running.
The room was dark and cool, but moonlight filtered through the shutter slats. On her truckle, Liss muttered and turned over.
It had been one of those dreams. The real ones. There was no mistaking them.
Ista clutched her hair, opened her mouth in a rictus, screamed silently. Breathed, “Curse You. Whichever one of You this is. Curse You, one and five. Get out of my head. Get out of my head!”
Liss made a little cat sound and mumbled sleepily, “Lady? You all right?” She sat up on her elbow, blinking.
Ista swallowed for control and cleared her tight throat. “Just an odd dream. Go back to sleep, Liss.”
Liss grunted agreeably and rolled back over.
Ista lay back, clutching her feather coverlet to her despite her sweat-dampened body.
Was it starting again?
No. No. I won’t have it. She gasped and gulped, and barely kept from breaking into sobs. In a few minutes, her breathing steadied.
Who had that man been? It was no one she had ever seen in her life, she was certain. She would know him instantly if she ever saw him again, though;