“No, I’m not,” Cazaril called eagerly. “Come in.” He tensed his arms to push himself upright, then thought better of it. He added, “Make more light. A deal more light. I want to see you.”
A great party of persons shuffled into his chamber, attempting to make themselves quiet and gentle, like a parade gone suddenly shy. Iselle and Bergon, with Betriz and Palli attendant upon them; the archdivine of Taryoon, with the little judge of the Father staring around in his wake. They quite filled the room. Cazaril smiled up amiably at them from his horizontal paradise of clean linens and stillness as candle was held to candle and the flames multiplied.
Bergon looked down at him in apprehension and whispered hoarsely to the physician, “How is he?”
“He passed a deal of blood in his water earlier, but less tonight. He has no fever yet. I daren’t let him have more than a few sips of tea, till we know how his gut wound progresses. I don’t know how much pain he bears.”
Cazaril decided he preferred to speak for himself. “I hurt, no doubt of that.” He made another feeble attempt to roll up, and winced. “I would sit up a little. I cannot talk looking up all your noses like this.” Palli and Bergon rushed to help gently raise him, plumping pillows behind him.
“Thank you,” said Iselle to the physician, who bowed and, taking the royal hint, stepped out of the way.
Cazaril eased back with a sigh, and said, “What has transpired? Is Taryoon under attack? And don’t talk in those funereal whispers, either.”
Iselle smiled from the foot of his bed. “Much has happened,” she told him, her voice reverting to its normal firm timbre. “Dy Jironal had men advancing as fast as they could march from both his son-in-law in Thistan and from Valenda, to follow up in support of his spies and abductors got in at the festival. Late last night the column coming down the road from Valenda met the delegation carrying our letter to Orico in Cardegoss, and captured them.”
“Alive, yes?” said Cazaril in alarm.
“There was some scuffle, but none killed, thank the gods. Much debate followed in their camp.”
Well, he had sent the most sensible, persuasive men of weight and worth that Taryoon could muster for that embassy.
“Later in the afternoon, we sent out parties of parley. We included some of dy Jironal’s men who had witnessed the fight in the courtyard, and . . . and whatever that miraculous blue fire was that killed him, to explain and to testify. They cried and gibbered a lot, but they were very convincing. Cazaril, what really—oh, and they say Orico is dead.”
Cazaril sighed. I knew that. “When?”
The archdivine of Taryoon replied, “There’s some confusion about that. A Temple courier rode through to us this afternoon with the news. She bore me a letter from Archdivine Mendenal in Cardegoss saying it was the night after the royesse’s—the royina’s wedding. But dy Jironal’s men all say he told them Orico had died the night before it, and so he was now rightful regent of Chalion. I suppose he was lying. I’m not sure it matters, now.”
But it might have mattered, had events taken a different path . . . Cazaril frowned in curious speculation.
“In any case,” put in Bergon, “between the news of dy Jironal’s startling taking-off, and the failure and capture of their infiltrators, and the realization that they marched not against a rebellious Heiress, but their rightful royina, the columns have broken up. The men are returning to their homes. I’m just back from overseeing that.” Indeed, he was mud-splashed, bright-eyed with the exuberance of success—and relief.
“Do you think the truce will hold?” asked Cazaril. “Dy Jironal held the strings of a very considerable network of power and relations, all of whom still have their interests at risk.”
Palli grunted, and shook his head. “They have not the backing of forces from the Order of the Son, now it’s headless—worse, they’ve the near certainty that control of the order will pass out of their faction now. I think the Jironal clan will learn caution.”
“The provincar of Thistan has already sent us a letter of submission,” put in Iselle, “just arrived. It looks to have been hastily penned. We plan to wait one more day to be sure the roads are clear, and to give thanks to the gods in the temple of Taryoon. Then Bergon and I will ride for Cardegoss with a contingent of my uncle’s cavalry, for Orico’s funeral and my coronation.” Her mouth turned down. “I fear we will have to leave you here for a time, Lord Caz.”
He glanced at Betriz, watching him, her eyes dark with concern. Where Iselle rode, Betriz, her first courtier, must needs follow.
Iselle went on, “Don’t speak if it pains you too much, but Cazaril . . . what happened in the courtyard? Did the Daughter truly strike dy Jironal dead with a bolt of lightning?”
“His body looked it, I must say,” said Bergon. “All cooked. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That is a good story,” said Cazaril slowly, “and will do for most men. You here should know the truth, but . . . I think this truth should go no further, eh?”
Iselle quietly bade the physician excuse himself. She glanced curiously at the little judge. “And this gentleman, Cazaril?”
“The Honorable Paginine is . . . is in the way of being a colleague of mine. He should stay, and the archdivine as well.”
Cazaril found his audience ranged around his bed, staring at him rather breathlessly. Neither Paginine nor the archdivine, nor Palli, knew the preamble about Dondo and the death demon, Cazaril realized, and so he found himself compelled to revert to that beginning, though in as few words as he could make come out sensibly. At least he hoped it sounded coherent, and not like the ravings of a madman.
“Archdivine Mendenal in Cardegoss knows all this tale,” he assured the shocked-looking pair from Taryoon. Palli’s mouth was twisted in something between astonishment and indignation; Cazaril evaded his eye a trifle guiltily. “But when dy Jironal bade his men hold me unarmed, and ran me through—when he murdered me, the death demon bore us all off in an unbalanced confusion of killers and victims. That is, the demon bore the pair of them, but somehow my soul was attached, and followed . . . what I saw then . . . the goddess . . .” his voice faltered. “I don’t know how to open my mouth and push out the universe in words. It won’t fit. If I had all the words in all the languages in the world that ever were or will be, and spoke till the end of time, it still couldn’t . . .” He was shivering, suddenly, his eyes blurred with tears.
“But you weren’t really dead, were you?” said Palli uneasily.
“Oh, yes. Just for a little while . . . for an odd angle of little that came out, um, very large. If I had not died in truth, I could not have ripped open the wall between the worlds, and the goddess could not have reached in to take back the curse. Which was a drop of the Father’s blood, as nearly as I could tell, though how the Golden General came by such a gift I know not. That’s a metaphor, by the way. I’m sorry. I have not . . . I have not the words for what I saw. Talking about it is like trying to weave a box of shadows in which to carry water.” And our souls are parched. “The Lady of Spring let me look through Her eyes, and though my second sight is taken back—I think—my eyes do not seem to work quite the same as they did . . .”
The archdivine signed himself. Paginine cleared his throat, and said diffidently, “Indeed, my lord, you do not make that great roaring light about you anymore.”
“Do I not? Oh, good.” Cazaril added eagerly, “But the black cloak about Iselle and Bergon, it is gone as well, yes?”