Illvin's lips parted, but no sound came out.
Arhys smiled slightly and turned again to view the walnut grove in the fading light. Though perhaps not fading for him, Ista was reminded. "So, how would I find these sorcerers and not waste time butchering ordinary men?"
Foix cleared his throat. "I can see them."
Behind them, sitting small and cross-legged by the wall again, Liss caught her breath.
Arhys looked across at Foix. "Would you ride out with me, dy Gura? It's a good pairing. I think you are less vulnerable to these sorcerous attacks than any other man here."
"I ... let me look at the ground." Foix, too, advanced to the battlement and leaned upon it, staring down at the camp. Ista saw by the way his eyes opened and closed that he marshaled his second sight to study this challenge.
Arhys turned to Ista. "Royina, can you manage this thing? Neither Illvin nor I will be able to speak to you—we must rely on your judgment when to make or break our links."
lam every kind of afraid. Physically. Magically. Morally. But mostly the last. "I think I could cut Illvin free of you, yes. What about Cattilara?"
"I would spare her," said Arhys. "Let her sleep."
"To wake a widow? I am not sure that is a betrayal she could ever forgive. She may be young and foolish, but she is not a child now, and will never be a child again. In any case, she must be allowed to wake and eat, that she may lend you strength, and not fail through no fault of her own."
Illvin said, "I fear if she has any hint of this, she will grow quite frenzied. And I doubt her demon will be on our side either."
The stars were coming out, overhead. On the western horizon, glowing pink feathers of cloud were fading to gray. So much indifferent beauty, in the world of matter...
"I must take thought for Cattilara," said Ista. It seems no one else is willing to.
From the deepening shadows, Foix spoke: "Lord Arhys, if you decide to ride out, I will go with you. If the royina will release me to your command."
Ista hesitated for three sick heartbeats. "I release you."
"Thank you, Royina, for this honor," Foix said formally.
"Come," said Arhys to Illvin. "Let us go see if there is enough unbroken gear left in Castle Porifors to outfit this curious hunt. Foix, attend." He turned for the stairs.
Illvin strode back to grasp Ista's hand and lift it to his lips. "I shall see you shortly."
"Yes," whispered Ista. The grip tightened, and was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IT WAS CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT BEFORE LORD ARHYS WENT TO REST in his chambers, so that Cattilara, on the other side of the door, might be roused to eat. His page removed his boots, but no more, and settled by the foot of the bed to guard his repose. Ista thought the exhausted boy would be asleep on the floor before five minutes had passed. Arhys lay back on his bed, eyes wide and dark in the light of the room's sole candle.
"Be tender with her," he pleaded to Ista. "She has had to endure far too much."
"I will use my very best judgment," Ista returned. Arhys accepted her words with a nod. It was Illvin, overseeing the dispositions before returning to the night's too-eventful watch, who cocked a curious eyebrow at her as they turned away.
"Be as careful of her as of her demon, and I don't mean it the way Arhys does," he muttered to Ista. "After that accursed escapade with the wagon, I believe there is no limit to what she would do in pursuit of her ends."
"I will use," said Ista neutrally, "my very best judgment." She let Foix and Liss pass before her into Lady Cattilara's chamber and closed the door upon him, gently but firmly.
The most levelheaded of Cattilara's ladies was just arriving with the meal tray. The haggard look on her face, as well as the care she took setting the food down, told Ista she recognized the cost of it. Ista dismissed her only as far as a seat on a chest. Liss stayed by Ista's elbow as she approached Cattilara's bed.
"Foix, stand by her feet. Keep an eye on her demon," Ista directed. Foix nodded and did so. Ista was unhappy to be demanding yet one more duty of him, when he was so plainly drained to the point of swaying on his feet. He desperately needed to rest for a few hours before the sortie. But Joen had taught her greater caution of demons.
Ista called up her inner sight and closed her hands around the flow of soul-fire from Catti's heart, reducing it to the tiniest trickle of contact with Arhys. Ista imagined the look of life flowing from his face in the next room, and her chest tightened. The demon shadow squirmed in agitation, but did not challenge Ista's control. Cattilara's eyes flew open, and her breath drew in. She sat up abruptly, then swayed, dizzy. Liss pressed a tin cup of water into her hand. By the way she guzzled, pressing it to her dry lips, Ista thought they were none too soon with this sustenance. Liss transferred the tray to a small table by the bedside and drew off the linen cover. Plain fare, and stale, presented on a miscellany of battered old plates.
Catti glared over the cup at Ista and glowered down at the tray. "What is this? Servants' food? Or a prisoner's? Is the mistress of Porifors so dethroned by her usurper, now?"
"It is the last and best untainted food in the keep, reserved for you. We are now surrounded by a Jokonan army and besieged by a troop of sorcerers. Their demon magic is chewing everything within these walls to pieces and spitting it out upon us. All the water is gone. The meat seethes with maggots. Half the courts are burned, and a third of the horses lie dead. Men are dying tonight below us of disease and injury without ever having come within bowshot of Joen and Sordso's troops. Joen's new way of making war is ingenious, cruel, and effective. Extraordinarily effective. So eat, because it is the only meal Arhys will have tonight."
Cattilara gritted her teeth, but at least she gritted them on her first bite of dry bread. "We could have fled. We should have fled! I could have had Arhys forty miles from here by now, and out of this. Curse you for a lack-witted bitch!"
Foix and Liss stirred at the insult, but Ista's raised hand stayed them. "Arhys would not have thanked you. And who is we? Are you even certain whose voice speaks from inside your head right now? Eat."
Catti gnawed, gracelessly, but too driven by her ferocious waking hunger to spurn the proffered meal. Liss kept the water coming, for Cattilara's sunken features betrayed how dangerously parched she had grown. Ista let her chew and swallow for several minutes, until she began visibly to slow.
"Later tonight," Ista began again, "Arhys rides out on a hazardous sortie, a gamble to save us all. Or die trying."
"You mean him to die," Catti mumbled. "You hate him. You hate me."
"You are twice mistaken, though I admit to a strong desire to slap you at times. Now, for instance. Lady Cattilara, you are the wife of a soldier-commander and the daughter of a soldier-commander. You cannot possibly have been raised, here in this dire borderland, to such wild self-indulgence."
Cattilara looked away, perhaps to conceal a flash of shame in her face. "This stupid war has always dragged on. It will always drag on. But once Arhys is gone, he's gone forever. And all the good in the world goes with him. The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!"
"I have cursed them for years," said Ista dryly. "Turnabout being fair." Cattilara was furious, distraught, writhing in overwhelming pain. But was she divorced altogether from reason?
So what is reality now, here in this waking nightmare? Where is reason? Absurd, that I of all women should insist on reason.
"Keep chewing." Ista straightened her weary back, crossed her arms. "I have a proposition for you."
Cattilara glowered in suspicion.