"You may accept or refuse, but you may not have other choices. It quite resembles a miracle, in that regard. Arhys rides out tonight against Joen's sorcerers. Illvin has volunteered to accept his wounds, to the point of death. It seems to me that two bodies, both nourishing Arhys's sword arm and bearing his hurts, would carry him farther than one. Perhaps just the needed edge, that little difference between almost succeeding, and almost failing. You can be a part of his ride, or you can be shut out of it."
Foix, startled, said, "Royina, Lord Arhys would not desire this!"
"Quite," said Ista coolly. "No one else here will offer you this choice, Cattilara."
"You cannot do this behind his back!" said Foix.
"I am the appointed executor of this rite. This is women's business now, Foix. Be silent. Cattilara"—Ista drew breath—"widow you are and shall be, but the grief you will carry into the rest of your life will be different depending on the choices you make tonight."
"How better?" snarled Cattilara. Tears were leaking from her eyes now. "Without Arhys, all is ashes."
"I didn't say better. I said, different. You may accept the part apportioned to you, or you may lie down and be passed over. If you do not take your part, and he fails, you will never, ever know whether you might have made the difference. If you accept the part, and he still falls—then you will know that, too.
"Arhys would have protected you from this choice, as a father would a beloved child. Arhys is wrong in this. I give you a woman's choice, here, at the last gasp. He looks to spare you pain this night. I look to your nights for the next twenty years. There is neither right nor wrong in this, precisely. But the time to amend all choices runs out like Porifors's water."
"You think he will die in this fight," grated Cattilara.
"He's been dead for three months. I did not war against his death,
but against his damnation. I have lost. In my lifetime, I have looked two gods in the eye, and it has seared me, till I am afraid of almost nothing in the world of matter. But I am afraid of this, for him. He stands this night on the edge of the true death, the death that lasts forever, and there is none to pull him back from that precipice. Not even the gods can save him if he falls now."
"Your choice is no choice. It's death all ways."
"No: death in different ways. You had more of him than any woman alive. Now the wheel turns. Be assured, someday it will turn for you. All are equal in this. He goes first, but not uniquely. Nor alone, for he will have a large Jokonan escort, I do think."
"He will if I have anything to do with it," growled Foix.
"Yes. Do you imagine not one of them is also beloved, as Arhys is? You have a chance to let Arhys go out in serenity, with his mind clear and unimpeded, concentrated as the sword which is his symbol. I will not give you leave to send him off harassed and dismayed, distracted and grieved."
Cattilara snarled, "Why should I give him up to death—or to the gods, or to you, or to anyone? He's mine. All my life is his."
"Then you shall be hollow and echoing indeed, when he is gone."
"This disaster is not my doing! If people had just done things my way, this all could have been averted. Everyone is against me—"
The food on the tray was all gone. Sighing, Ista touched her ligature, and opened the channel wide once more. Cattilara sank back, cursing. The flow of soul-fire from Catti's heart was slow and surly, but it would suffice for the next few hours.
"I would have liked to give her a chance to say good-bye," said Ista sadly. "Lord Illvin's remarks on kisses withheld and words unspoken weigh much on my mind."
Foix, his face appalled, said, "Her remarks were better left unspoken to Lord Arhys just now, I think."
"So I judged. Five gods, why was I appointed to this court? Go, Foix, get what rest you may. It is your most urgent duty now."
"Aye, Royina." He glanced at Liss. "Will you come down to see us off? Later on?"
"Yes," whispered Liss.
Foix started to speak, seemed to find his throat strangely uncooperative, nodded thanks, and bowed his way out.
ISTA, TOO, EVENTUALLY WENT TO LIE DOWN IN HER CHAMBERS FOR A few hours. She longed for a dreamless slumber, feared the sleep of dreams, but in any case merely dozed, disquieted by the occasional agonized noises that filtered in through her lattice from a castle disintegrating, it seemed, about all their ears. At length Liss, drawn face candlelit by a stub in a brass holder whose glass vase lay in shards somewhere, came to rouse her. Ista was already awake and dressed. The bleak mourning garb was growing dirty and frayed, but its black robe suited her mood and the shadows of this hour.
Liss followed her, holding up the meager light, as Ista eased out the door onto the gallery. She took three steps down the empty stairs, and stopped. Her breath caught.
A tall, somber man stood on the treads two below her, so that his face was level with hers, in precisely the position she had kissed and challenged the dead Arhys, half a lifetime ago here. His face and form were uncertain in outline; she thought he looked a bit like Arhys, a bit like Arvol, and more than a little like her own dead father, though dy Baocia had been a shorter, thicker man. He was not much, she thought, like Ias.
He was dressed as an officer of Porifors, in mail and a gray-and-gold tabard; but the mail gleamed, and the tabard was pressed and perfect, its embroidery bright as fire. His hair and beard were pure gray, cut short as Arhys's were, clean and fine. The wavering candlelight did not reflect from his upturned face, nor from the endless depths of his eyes; they shone instead with their own effulgent light.
Ista swallowed, raised her chin. Stiffened her knees. "I wasn't expecting You here."
The Father of Winter favored her with a grave nod. "All gods attend on all battlefields. What parents would not wait as anxiously by their door, looking again and again up the road, when their child was due home from a long and dangerous journey? You have waited by that door yourself, both fruitfully and in vain. Multiply that anguish by ten thousands, and pity me, sweet Ista. For my great-souled child is very late, and lost upon his road."
The deep resonance of his voice seemed to make her chest vibrate, her bones ring. She could barely breathe. Water clouded her vision and fell from her unblinking eyes. "I know it, Sire," she whispered.
"My calling voice cannot reach him. He cannot see the light in my window, for he is sundered from me, blind and deaf and stumbling, with none to take his hand and guide him. Yet you may touch him, in his darkness. And I may touch you, in yours. Then take you this thread to draw him through the maze, where I cannot go."
He leaned forward and kissed her on the brow. His lips burned like cold metal. Fearfully, she reached up and touched his beard, as she had Arhys's that day, tickling strange and soft beneath her palm. As he bent his head, a tear fell as a snowflake upon the back of her hand, melted, and vanished.
"Am I to be a spiritual conductor on Your behalf, now?" she asked, dazed.
"No; my doorway." He smiled enigmatically at her, a white streak in the night like lightning across her senses, and her reeling mind slipped from dazed to dazzled. "I will wait there for him, for a little while." He stepped backward, and the stair was empty again.
Ista stood, shaken. The spot on the back of her left hand where his tear had splashed was icy cold.
"Royina?" said Liss, very cautiously, stopped behind her. "Who are you talking to?"
"Did you see a man?"
"Um... no?"
"I am sorry."
Liss held up her candle. "You're crying."
"Yes. I know. It's all right. Let us go on now. I think perhaps you had better hold my arm till we get down the stairs."