The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [107]
14
Cazaril had to allow Umegat’s wine this much merit—it did mean he spent the first few hours of the next morning wishing for death rather than dreading it. He knew his hangover was passing off when fear began to regain the upper hand.
He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He’d seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he’d had his chances, though the gods knew he’d made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he’d be forced to leave undone.
Fears he’d had no time for during the day he’d stalked Dondo now crowded into his mind. Who would guard his ladies, if he were to die now? How much time was going to be granted to him to try to find some better bastion for them? On whom could they be safely bestowed? Betriz might find protection as the wife, say, of a stout country lord like March dy Palliar. But Iselle? Her grandmother and mother were too weak and distant, Teidez too young, Orico, apparently, entirely the creature of his chancellor. There could be no security for Iselle until she was out of this cursed court altogether.
Another cramp riveted his attention again on the lethal little hell in his belly, and he peered worriedly down under the tent of his sheet at his knotted stomach. How much was this dying going to hurt? He had not passed so much blood this morning. He blinked around his chamber in the early-afternoon light. The odd hallucinations, pale blurred blobs at the corners of his vision that he had earlier blamed on last night’s wine, were still present. Maybe they were another symptom?
A brisk knock sounded at his chamber door. Cazaril crawled from his warm refuge and, walking only a little bent over, went to unlock it. Umegat, bearing a stoppered ewer, bade him good afternoon, stepped within, and closed the door behind him. He was still faintly radiant: alas, yesterday hadn’t been a bizarre bad dream after all.
“My word,” the groom added, staring about in astonishment. He waved his hand. “Shoo! Shoo!”
The pale blurred blobs swirled about the chamber and fled into the walls.
“What are those things?” Cazaril asked, easing back into his bed. “Do you see them, too?”
“Ghosts. Here, drink this.” Umegat poured from the ewer into the glazed cup from Cazaril’s washbasin set, and handed it across. “It will settle your stomach and clear your head.”
About to reject it with loathing, Cazaril discovered it to be not wine but some sort of cold herbed tea. He tasted it cautiously. Pleasantly bitter, its astringency made a most welcome sluicing in his sticky mouth. Umegat pulled a stool over to his bedside and settled cheerfully. Cazaril squeezed his eyes shut, and open again. “Ghosts?”
“I’ve never seen so many of the Zangre’s ghosts collected in one place. They must be attracted to you just like the sacred animals.”
“Can anyone else see them?”
“Anyone with the inner eye. That’s three in Cardegoss, to my knowledge.”
And two of them are here. “Have they been around all this time?”
“I glimpse them now and then. They’re usually more elusive. You needn’t be afraid of them. They are powerless and cannot hurt you. Old lost souls.” In response to Cazaril’s rather stunned stare, Umegat added, “When, as happens from time to time, no god takes up a sundered soul, it is left to wander the world, slowly losing its mindfulness of itself and fading into air. New ghosts first take the form they had in life, but in their despair and loneliness they cannot maintain it.”
Cazaril wrapped his arms around his belly. “Oh.” His mind tried to gallop in three directions at once. So what was the fate of those souls the gods did accept? And just what exactly was happening to the enraged spirit so miraculously and hideously lodged in him? And…the Dowager