The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [141]
“Lord dy Palliar, I thank you for your aid,” the archdivine said. He added, “Lord Cazaril, please stay.”
Palli said merely, “You’re entirely welcome, Your Reverence,” then after a heartbeat, as the hint penetrated, “Oh. Ah. If you’re all right, Caz…?”
“For now.”
“Then I should perhaps return to the Daughter’s house. If you need anything, at any time, send for me there, or at Yarrin Palace, and I’ll ‘tend upon you at once. You should not go about alone.” He gave Cazaril a stern look, to be sure this was understood as command and not parting pleasantry. He, too, then bowed, and, opening the door for the physician, followed in her wake.
As the door closed, Mendenal turned to Cazaril, his hands outstretched in pleading. “Lord Cazaril, what should we do?”
Cazaril recoiled. “Five gods, you’re asking me?”
The man’s lips twisted ruefully. “Lord Cazaril, I’ve only been the archdivine of Cardegoss for two years. I was chosen because I was a good administrator, I fancy, and to please my family, because my brother and my father before him were powerful provincars. I was dedicated to the Bastard’s Order at age fourteen, with a good dower from my father to assure my care and advancement. I have served the gods faithfully all my life, but…they do not speak to me.” He stared at Cazaril, and glanced aside to the Mother’s midwife, with an odd hopeless envy in his eyes, devoid of hostility. “When a pious ordinary man finds himself in a room with three working saints—if he has any wits left—he seeks instruction, he does not feign to instruct.”
“I am not…” Cazaril bit back the denial. He had more urgent concerns than arguing over the theological definition of his current condition, though if this was sainthood, the gods must exceed themselves for damnation. “Honorable Acolyte—I’m sorry, I have forgotten your name?”
“I am Clara, Lord Cazaril.”
Cazaril gave her a little bow. “Acolyte Clara. Do you see—do you not see—Umegat’s glow? I’ve never seen him when—is it supposed to go out when a man is asleep or unconscious?”
She shook her head. “The gods are with us waking and sleeping, Lord Cazaril. I’m sure I don’t have the strength of sight you do, but indeed, the Bastard has withdrawn his presence from Learned Umegat.”
“Oh, no,” breathed Mendenal.
“Are you sure?” said Cazaril. “It could not be a defect in my—in your second sight?”
She glanced at him, wincing a little. “No. For I can see you plainly enough. I could see you before you came in the door. It is almost painful to be in the same room with you.”
“Does this mean the miracle of the menagerie is broken?” asked Mendenal anxiously, gesturing at the unconscious groom. “We have no dike now against the tide of this black curse?”
She hesitated. “Umegat no longer hosts the miracle. I do not know if the Bastard has transferred it to another’s will.”
Mendenal wheeled to stare hopefully at Cazaril. “His, perhaps?”
She frowned at Cazaril, absently holding her hand to her brow as if to shade her eyes. “If I am a saint, as Learned Umegat has named me, I am only a small domestic one. If Umegat’s tutelage had not sharpened my perceptions over the years, I should merely have thought myself unusually lucky in my profession.”
Luck, Cazaril couldn’t help reflecting, had not been his most salient experience since he’d stumbled into the gods’ maze.
“And yet the Mother only reaches through me from time to time, then passes on. Lord Cazaril…blazes. From the day I first saw him at Lord Dondo’s funeral. The white light of the Bastard and the blue clarity of the Lady of Spring, both at once, the constant living presence of two gods, all mixed with some other dark thing I cannot make out. Umegat could see more clearly. If the Bastard has added more to the roil already there, I cannot tell.”
The archdivine touched brow, lips, navel, groin, and heart, fingers spread wide, and stared hungrily at Cazaril. “Two gods, two gods at once, and in this room!”
Cazaril bent forward, hands clenching, hideously reminded by the pressure of his belt of the terrifying distention beneath it. “Did