The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [164]
“After Iselle was born, the visions ceased. I thought I had been mad, and then got well again.”
The eye could not see itself, not even the inner eye. He had been granted Umegat, been granted knowledge bought at others’ cost and handed to him as a gift. How frightened would he be by now, if he were still groping for explanations of the inexplicable?
“Then I became pregnant again, with Teidez. And the visions began again, twice as bad as before. It was unbearable to think myself mad. Only when I threatened to kill myself did Ias confess to me that it was the curse, and that he knew it. Had always known of it.”
And how betrayed, to find that those who’d known the truth hadn’t told him, had left him to stagger about in isolated terror?
“I was horrified that I had brought my two children into this dire danger. I prayed and prayed to the gods that it might be lifted, or that they would tell me how it might be lifted, that they would spare the innocent.
“Then the Mother of Summer came to me, when I was round to bursting with Teidez. Not in a dream, not while I was sleeping, but when I was awake and sober, in the broad day. She stood as close to me as you are now, and I fell to my knees. I could have touched her robe, if I’d dared. Her breath was a perfume, like wildflowers in the summer grasses. Her face was too beautiful for my eyes to comprehend, it was like staring into the sun. Her voice was music.”
Ista’s lips softened; even now, the peace of that vision echoed briefly in her face, a flash of beauty like the reflection of sunlight on dark waters. But her brows tightened again, and she spoke on, bending forward, growing, if possible, more shadowed, more intent.
“She said that the gods sought to take the curse back, that it did not belong in this world, that it was a gift to the Golden General that he had spilt improperly. She said that the gods might draw the curse back to them only through the will of a man who would lay down his life three times for the House of Chalion.”
Cazaril hesitated. The sound of his own breath in his nostrils seemed enough to drown out that quiet voice. But the question rose helplessly to his lips, though he cursed himself for sounding a fool. “Um…I don’t suppose that three men could lay down their lives once each, instead?”
“No.” Her lips curved in that weird ironic not-smile. “You see the problem.”
“I…I…I don’t see the solution, though. Was it a trick, this…prophecy?”
Her hands opened briefly, ambiguously, then began folding the handkerchief again. “I told Ias. He told Lord dy Lutez, of course; Ias kept nothing from dy Lutez, except for me. Except for me.”
Historical curiosity overcame Cazaril. Now that they were comrades in…sainthood, or something like it, it seemed easy to talk to Ista. The ease was lunatic, tilted, fragile, if he blinked it would be gone beyond recall, and yet…saint to saint and soul to soul, for this floating moment it was an intimacy stranger and more soaring than lover to lover. He began to understand why Umegat had fallen upon him with such hunger. “What was their relationship, really?”
She shrugged. “They were lovers since before I was born. Who was I to judge them? Dy Lutez loved Ias; I loved Ias. Ias loved us both. He tried so hard, cared so much, trying to bear the weight of all his dead brothers and his father Fonsa, too. He’d worn himself near to death with the caring, and yet it all went wrong, and wrong again.”
She hesitated for a time, and Cazaril was terrified for an instant that he had inadvertently done something to bring this flow of confidences to an end. But apparently she was marshaling…not her thoughts, but her heart: for she went on, even more slowly. “I don’t remember now whose idea it first was. We sat in a night council, the three of us, after Teidez was born. I still had the sight. We knew both of our children were drawn into this dark thing, and poor Orico, too. ‘Save my children,’ Ias cried,