"Can you remember anything at all from just before Lord Illvin bought you out?"
Goram shook his head. "There was a dark place. I liked it because it was cool. Stank, though."
"Wits and memories eaten out, the demon jumped, and yet—not dead," mused Ista. "Abandoning a live mount is not easy for a demon, I gather from dy Cabon; they get all tangled together somehow. Killing the person forces the demon out. Like Umerue. Or like the Quadrene burnings."
"Don't burn me!" cried Goram. He shrank down smaller, almost crouching, and stared in dismay at his own chest "No one will burn you," Illvin said firmly. "Not in Chalion, in any case, and now there is no need, because she says the demon is gone. All gone. Right?" He shot Ista a compelling glare.
"Very gone." And most of Goram with it, it seemed. She wondered if he had been a servant, before—or something more.
"Hamavik ..." murmured Illvin. "How suggestive. Both Goram and Princess Umerue were there at the same time. Could this... damage of Goram's have any relation to Umerue's demon?"
It made an enticing sort of connection. And yet... "Catti's demon didn't feel as if it had been dining on soldiers. It felt... I'm not sure how to put this. Too womanly. I suppose we can try to get information out of it again. I don't think the way it carried on here yesterday was any more usual for a demon than for a person. Or sorcerers would be far more conspicuous."
Liss, Ista noted, was looking most disturbed. Was she seeing a future Foix in Goram's slack, timid, bewildered face? Where was the boy? Ista wasn't desperate enough to pray yet, considering her feelings about prayer, but she thought she might become so if this hideous uncertainty went on much longer.
Ista continued, "Learned dy Cabon told me that demons were very rare, usually—but not these past few years. That the Temple had not seen an outbreak like this since Roya Fonsa's day, fifty years gone. I cannot imagine what rip in the Bastard's hell can be leaking them back into the world in such numbers, but that's what I am beginning to picture."
"Fonsa's day." Illvin's words were starting to slur. "Strange."
"Your time is almost up," Ista said, eyeing the thickening white rope with disfavor. "I can portion you some more."
"You said Arhys would start to rot, though," Illvin objected muzzily. "High summer. Can't have... bits of him falling off into his soup, can we now... ?" His voice was fading. He roused himself in a spasm of despair. "No! There must be another way! Have to find another way! Lady—come again... ?"
"Yes," she said. On the reassurance, he released his grip on the edge of his counterpane and slid down. His face emptied once more into waxen stillness.
ISTA KEPT TO HER CHAMBERS AGAIN THAT DAY, WAITING IMPATIENTLY for the sun to run its course and rise again. She penned her new letters to Cardegoss and, when the sun dropped, paced the stone courtyard until even Liss abandoned her side and sat on a bench to watch her circulate. By the following midmorning she was reduced to mentally composing another sharp letter to the provincar of Tolnoxo, though the first could barely have arrived yet, let alone been acted upon.
Rapid footsteps sounded on the stairs outside; Ista looked up from nibbling on her quill feather to see Liss's braid flash past beyond the grille. She thumped through to Ista's chamber and stuck her head in the door.
"Royina," she said breathlessly. "Something is happening. Lord Arhys has ridden out with a party of armed men—I'm going to the north tower to try to see what I can."
Ista rose so hastily she nearly knocked over her chair. "I'll go with you."
They climbed the winding stone staircase to this vantage behind a hastening crossbowman in Porifors's gray-and-gold tabard. All three went to the northeast edge and peered over the crenellations.
On this side of the castle, opposite the drop to the river, the land rolled away more level with the ridge. A road, pale with dry dust, wound east through the arid, sunny countryside.
"That's the road from Oby," panted Liss.
A pair of horsemen were galloping down it, details blurred by the distance. But even from here, Ista could see that one rider was thick, and the other much thicker. The thicker one wore some brown garment over flashes of white. The stiff gait of a horse attempting to canter under Learned dy Cabon's jouncing weight was distinctive, at least to Ista's experienced eye.
A little way beyond them galloped a dozen other men. An escort... ? No. Green tabards of Jokona, here, under the frowning brow of Porifors itself? Ista gasped. The pursuing soldiers were closing on the lead pair.
With a scuff of slippers and a flutter of silks, Lady Cattilara emerged onto the tower top and ran to look over. She stood on tiptoe and leaned, her pale bosom heaving. "Arhys... five gods, oh, the Father of Winter protect you ..."
Ista followed her gaze. Below Porifors, Arhys on his dappled gray led a troop of mounted men headlong up the road. The lesser horses were hard pressed to keep up with the gray's reaching strides, and Liss muttered approval of its ground-eating action.
Cattilara's lips parted on her panting, and her eyes grew wide and anxious. She vented a little moan.
"What," murmured Ista to her. "You can't be afraid of his being killed, after all."
Cattilara shot her a sulky look, hunched one shoulder, and returned her stare to the road.
Dy Cabon's overburdened horse was laboring, falling behind. The other horseman—yes, it was certainly Foix dy Gura—pulled up his own mount and motioned the divine onward. Foix's horse capered on the road, fighting his reins. Foix held the beast short with his left hand, grasped his sword hilt, and rose in his stirrups to glare at his pursuers.
No, Foix! Ista thought helplessly. Foix was a strong swordsman, but unsubtle, without Lord Arhys's brilliant speed; he might do for one or two of his enemies, maybe three, who would not rise again, but then the rest would overwhelm him. He had not yet seen the rescue riders approaching, out of his sight in a long hollow. He would throw himself away to save the divine, without need...
His right hand rose again from his hilt, fingers clenching and stretching. His arm went out, tensely. A faint violet light seemed to flicker from his palm, and Cattilara's breath drew in sharply in astonishment. Liss did not react; was oblivious to this light, Ista realized.
The first horse in the approaching pack stumbled and fell headlong, spilling its rider. Two others fell atop it before they could pull up. Several horses reared, or shied and tried to bolt to the sides. Foix jerked his mount around and began galloping after dy Cabon.
So. Foix still has his pet bear. And it seems he's taught it to dance. Ista's lips pursed in worry at the implications.
But other worries were more immediate. Past the rise and dip in the road, dy Cabon met Arhys. The divine's lathered brown horse staggered to a halt and stood spread-legged; the dappled gray reared beside it. Gesticulations, pointings. Arhys flung his hand in the air, and his troop reined up around him. More hand-waving, and quietly called orders blurred by the breeze to unintelligibility at Ista's apprehensive height and distance. Swords were drawn, bows cocked, lances leveled, and the troop spread out and began to move up behind the brow of the road.
Dy Cabon's failing horse stumbled on at a walk toward Porifors, but he twisted his bulk in the saddle to watch over his shoulder as Foix crested the hill. Foix recoiled briefly at the sight of the armed troop, but an open handed wave from Arhys, and a wilder arm-circling from dy Cabon, beyond, apparently reassured him. He lashed his horse onward, spoke briefly with Arhys, turned, and drew his sword.
A breathless pause. Ista could hear her blood thudding in her ears, and, foolishly, some bird warbling in the brush, a bright, liquid, indifferent trill, just as if this were some morning of peace and ease. Arhys raised his sword high and swung it down sharply in signal, and his troop thundered forward.