The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [99]
Betriz’s was among them. “Cazaril,” she said anxiously, crowding back under his arm to hiss in his ear, “what does it mean? The Bastard always takes the leftovers. Always. It is His, His…it’s His job. He can’t not take a severed soul—I thought He already had.”
Cazaril was stunned, too. “If no god has taken up Lord Dondo’s soul…then it’s still in the world. I mean, if it’s not there, then it has to be here. Somewhere…” An unquiet ghost, a revenant spirit. Sundered and damned.
The ceremonies stopped dead as the archdivine and Chancellor dy Jironal retreated around the hearth for a low-voiced conversation, or possibly argument, from the rise and chop of swallowed words that drifted back to the curious crowd waiting. The archdivine popped around the hearth to call an acolyte of the Bastard to him; after a whispered conference, the white-garbed young man departed at a run. The gray sky overhead was darkening. A subdivine, in a burst of initiative, struck up an unscheduled hymn from the robed singers to cover the gap. By the time they’d finished, dy Jironal and Mendenal had returned.
Still they waited. The singers embarked on another hymn. Cazaril found himself wishing he’d used Ordol’s Fivefold Pathway for something other than a prop to cover his naps; alas, the book was still back in Valenda. If Dondo’s spirit had not been taken by the servant-demon back to its master, where was it? And if the demon could not return except with both its soul-buckets filled, where was the sundered soul of Dondo’s unknown murderer now? For that matter, where was the demon? Cazaril had never read much theology. For some reason now obscure to him, he’d thought it an impractical study, suited only to unworldly dreamers. Till he’d waked to this nightmare.
A scritching noise from his boot made him look down. The sacred white rat was stretching itself up his leg, its pink nose quivering. It rubbed its little pointed face rapidly against Cazaril’s shin. He bent and picked it up, meaning to return it to its handler. It writhed ecstatically in his cupped hands, and licked his thumb.
To Cazaril’s surprise, the wheezing acolyte returned to the temple courtyard leading the groom Umegat, dressed as usual in the tabard of the Zangre. But it was Umegat who stunned him.
The Roknari shone with a white aura like a man standing in front of a clear glass window at a sea dawn. Cazaril shut his eyes, though he knew he didn’t see this with his eyes. The white blaze still moved behind his lids. Over there, a darkness that wasn’t darkness, and two more, and an unrestful aurora, and off to the side, a faint green spark. His eyes sprang open. Umegat stared straight at him for the fraction of a second, and Cazaril felt flensed. The roya’s groom moved on, to present himself with a diffident bow to the archdivine, and step aside for some whispered conference.
The archdivine called the Bastard’s acolyte to him, who had recaptured one of her charges; she gave up the rat to Umegat, who cradled it in one arm and glanced toward Cazaril. The Roknari groom trod over to him, humbly excusing himself through the crowd of courtiers, who barely glanced at him. Cazaril could not understand why they did not open before that bow wave of his white aura like the sea before a spinnaker-driven ship. Umegat held out his open hand. Cazaril blinked down stupidly at it.
“The sacred rat, my lord?” prompted Umegat gently.
“Oh.” The creature was still sucking on his fingers, tickling them. Umegat pulled the reluctant animal off Cazaril’s sleeve as though removing a burr and just prevented its mate from springing across to take its place. Juggling rats, he walked quietly back to the bier, where the archdivine waited. Was Cazaril losing his mind—don’t answer that—or did Mendenal barely keep himself