"A busy day, your restored companions and their Jokonan tailpiece have brought us," he began. "Two of my patrols, to the south and the west, have returned with nothing to report. Two have not yet come back, and they concern me." He hesitated. "Cattilara did not greet my return. She is angry with me, I think."
"For riding out on your duties? She will surely forgive you."
"She will not forgive my dying. I am become her enemy in this, as well as her prize."
Have you, now? "She still thinks she can get you back. Or at least prevent you from going. She does not, I think, perceive the wasting effect of this delay upon you, being blinded by the surfaces of things. If she sees the disintegrating ghosts at all, I do not think she understands the nature of their damnation."
"Damnation," he breathed. "Is that what my state is. That explains much."
"Theologically, I do believe that is precisely what it is, although perhaps Learned dy Cabon could refine the term. I do not know the scholars' language, but I have seen the thing itself. You are cut off from the nourishment of matter, but blocked from the sustenance of your god.
And yet, not by your own will, as the true and mercifully sundered spirits are. By another's interference. This is ... wrong."
He stretched and clenched his hands. "It can't go on. I don't even bother to pretend to eat, now. I drink only sips. My hands and face and feet are growing numb. Just within the past ten days I've noticed it, faintly at first, but it's getting worse."
"That does not sound good," she agreed. She hesitated. "Have you prayed?"
His hand went to his left sleeve, and Ista remembered the black-and-gray prayer cord bound secretly there. "Need for the gods comes and goes in a man's life. Cattilara longed for a child, I made my obeisances... but if the Father of Winter ever heard me, He gave me no sign. I was never the sort to receive portents, or to delude myself that I had. Silence was always my portion, in return for my prayers. But of late it seems to me the silence has grown... emptier. Royina"—his gaze, sparking out of the shadows, seemed to pierce her—"how much longer do I have?"
She was about to say, I don't know. But the evasion smacked of cowardice. No Mother's physician could answer him with any better knowledge than hers. What do I know? She studied him, with both outer and inner sights. "Of ghosts, I have seen many, but more old than new. They accumulate, you see. Most still hold the form of life, of their bodies, for some two or three months after death, but drained of color, and of caring. They slowly erode. By a year after, second sight can usually no longer distinguish human features, though they still have the form of a body. By several years old, they are a white blur, then a fainter blur, then gone. But the time varies greatly, I suspect, depending on the strength of character the person had to begin with." And the stresses of their dwindling existence? Arhys was unique in her experience. The demands upon his spirit would be huge for a living man. How could his starveling desolate ghost sustain them?
The great-souled give greatly, from their abundance. But even they must come to the end of themselves, without the upholding hands of... Her mind shied from completing the thought. She reined it round. Their god.
"So what is my appearance now?"
"Almost wholly colorless." She added reluctantly, "You are beginning to blur about the extremities."
He rubbed his face with an exploring hand and murmured, "Ah. Much comes clear." He sat silent for a little, then tapped his knee. "You once told me you had promised Ias not to speak of my father's true fate to any living soul. Urn. Well. Here am I, before you now. Royina, I would know."
Ista was surprised into a snort. "You are a most excellent lawyer, for a dead man. This counterthrust would be a very good, sharp point, if it weren't that I'd lied to you in the first place. Ias never asked me for any such promise. He was scarcely speaking to me by then. The tale I told you was but a shield, to hide my cravenness."
"Craven is not how I'd describe you, lady."
"One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns."
"Then I ask the truth of you now, as my bier gift. More desirable to me than flowers."
"Ah." She let out her breath in a long sigh. "Yes." Her fingers traced over the smooth, cool amethysts and silver filigree of the brooch beneath her breast. Dy Lutez wore it in his hat. He wore it there on his last day, I do recall. "This will be but the third time in my life to make this confession."
"Third time pays for all, they say."
"What do they know?" She snorted again, more softly. "I think not. Still, my auditors have been of the best, as befits my rank and crime. A living saint, an honest divine, the dead man's dead son... so." She had told it over in her mind enough times; it needed no further rehearsal. She straightened her back, and began.
"All men know that Ias's father, Roya Fonsa, in despair at the loss of his sons and his royacy before the onslaught of the Golden General's alliance, slew his enemy by a rite of death magic, giving up his own life in the balance."
"That is history, yes."
"Fewer men know that the rite spilled a residue, a subtle curse afflicting Fonsa's heirs, and all their works. First Ias, then his son Orico. Teidez. Iselle. Orico's barren wife, Sara. And me," she breathed. "And me."
"Ias's was not noted as a fortunate reign for Chalion," he conceded warily. "Nor Orico's."
"Ias the Unlucky. Orico the Impotent. The nicknames given by the vulgar do not touch the half of it. Ias knew of his curse, knew its origin and its nature, though he did not tell even Orico until he lay on his deathbed. But he shared the knowledge with Arvol dy Lutez, his companion from boyhood, marshal, chancellor, right arm. Possibly, as Orico did later with his own favorites, Ias was trying to use Arvol as a tongs by which to handle the affairs of Chalion without spilling his evil geas upon them. Not that the ploy worked. But it suited Arvol dy Lutez's ambitions and huge energies well enough. And his arrogance. I grant, your father did love Ias in his way. Ias worshipped him, and was utterly dependent upon his judgment. Arvol even selected me for him."
Arhys pulled on his close-trimmed beard. "The rumor I have heard bruited by the envious that they were, ah, more intimate than boon companions, I take to be political slander?"
"No," she said simply. "They were lovers for years, as all Cardegoss knew but did not speak of outside the capital walls. My own mother told me, just before I wed, so I would not step into it unawares. I thought her callous, then. Now I think her wise. And worried. Looking back, I think it also was an offer to let me back out, though I missed that implication entirely at the time. Yet for all her candid warnings— which, I found later, Lord dy Lutez had insisted she give me—to prevent trouble for him, mostly, I suspect, though also for Ias—I did not understand what it meant. How could I—a romantic virgin, overwhelmed by what seemed a great victory on the field of love, to be chosen as bride by the roya himself? I nodded and agreed, anxious to seem sophisticated and sensible."
"Oh," he said, very quietly.
"So if ever you thought your mother untrue to her vows, to take Illvin's father to her bed, be assured she was not the first dy Lutez to break them. I suspect her mother was less shrewd and honest than mine, preparing her for her high marriage. Or less informed."