The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [185]
“Bastard’s hell,” whispered Foix. He lowered his bow and touched the five theological points, forehead-lip-navel-groin-heart, in a warding gesture.
They’d found the bodies.
They were thrown upon the midden, tumbled down the edge of the crevasse atop years of kitchen and stable yard waste. One younger man, two older; in this rural place it was not possible to distinguish certainly master from man by dress, as all wore practical working leathers and woolens. The woman, plump and homely and middle-aged, was stripped naked, as was the boy, who appeared to have been about five. Both mutilated according to a cruel humor. Violated, too, probably. Dead about a day, Cazaril judged by the progress the crows had made. The woman-ghost was weeping silently, and the child-ghost clung to her and wailed. They were not god-rejected souls, then, just sundered, still dizzied from their deaths and unable to find their way without proper ceremonies.
Cazaril fell to his knees, and whispered, “Lady. If I am alive in this place, you must be, too. If it please you, give these poor spirits ease.”
The ghostly faces changed, rippling from woe to wonder; the insubstantial bodies blurred like sun diffractions in a high, feathered cloud, then vanished.
After about a minute Cazaril said muzzily, “Help me up, please.”
The bewildered Foix levered him up with a hand under his elbow. Cazaril staggered around and started back up the path.
“My lord, should we not look around for others?”
“No, that’s all.”
Foix followed him without another word.
In the slate-paved courtyard, they found Ferda and an armed groom just emerging again from the main doorway.
“Did you find anyone else?” Cazaril asked him.
“No, my lord.”
Beside the door, only the young male ghost still lingered, although its luminescent body seemed to be ribboning away like smoke in a wind. It writhed in a kind of agony, gesturing Cazaril on. What dire urgency was it that turned it from the open arms of the goddess to cling to this wounded world? “Yes, yes, I’m coming,” Cazaril told it.
It slipped inside; Cazaril motioned Foix and Ferda, looking uneasily at him, to follow on. They passed through the main hall and under a gallery, back through the kitchens, and down some wooden stairs to a dark, stone-walled storeroom.
“Did you search in here?” Cazaril called over his shoulder.
“Yes, my lord,” said Ferda.
“Get more light.” He stared intently at the ghost, which was now circling the room in agitation, whirling in a tightening spiral. Cazaril pointed. “Move those barrels.”
Foix rolled them aside. Ferda clattered back down from the kitchen with a brace of tallow candles, their flames yellow and smoky but bright in the gloom. Concealed beneath the barrels they found a stone slab in the floor with an iron ring set in it. Cazaril motioned to Foix again; the boy grabbed the ring and strained, and shifted the slab up and aside, revealing narrow steps descending into utter blackness.
From below, a faint voice cried out.
The ghost bent to Cazaril, seeming to kiss his forehead, hands, and feet, and then streamed away into eternity. A faint blue sparkle, like a chord of music made visible, glittered for a moment in Cazaril’s second sight, and was gone. Ferda, the candles in one hand and his drawn sword in the other, cautiously descended the stone steps.
Clamor and babble wafted back up through the dank slot. In a few moments, Ferda appeared again, supporting up the stairs a disheveled stout old man, his face bruised and battered, his legs shaking. Following in his wake, weeping for gladness, a dozen other equally shattered people climbed one by one.
The freed prisoners all fell upon Ferda and Foix with questions and tales at once, inundating them; Cazaril leaned unobtrusively upon a barrel and pieced together the picture. The stout