The Curse of Chalion

Cazaril absorbed this for a moment. Daily duties, eh. Today's had brought some curious turns. He spoke now as comrade to comrade. "Umegat, listen, I've had an idea. We know the curse has followed the House of Chalion's male line, Fonsa to Ias to Orico. Yet Royina Sara wears nearly as dark a shadow as Orico does, and she is no spawn of Fonsa's loins. She must have married into the curse, yes?"

The fine lines of Umegat's face deepened with his frown. "Sara already bore the shadow when I first came, years ago, but I suppose... yes, it must have been so."

"Ista likewise, presumably?"

"Presumably."

"So—could Iselle marry out of the curse? Shed it with her marriage vows, when she leaves her family of birth behind and enters into the family of her husband? Or would the curse follow her to taint them both?"

Umegat's brows went up. "I don't know."

"But you don't know that it's impossible? I was thinking that it might be a way to salvage... something."

Umegat sat back. "Possibly. I don't know. It was never a ploy to consider, for Orico."

"I need to know, Umegat. Royesse Iselle is pushing Orico to open negotiations for her marriage out of Chalion."

"Chancellor dy Jironal will surely not allow that."

"I would not underestimate her powers of persuasion. She is not another Sara."

"Neither was Sara, once. But you are right. Oh, my poor Orico, to be pressed between two such grinding stones."

Cazaril bit his lip, and paused a long time before venturing his next query. "Umegat... you've been observing this court for many years. Was dy Jironal always so poisonous a peculator, or has the curse slowly been corrupting him, too? Did the curse draw such a man to his position of power, or would any man trying to serve the House of Chalion become so corroded, in time?"

"You ask very interesting questions, Lord Cazaril." Umegat's graying brows drew down in thought. "I wish I had better answers. Martou dy Jironal was always forcible, intelligent, able. We shall leave aside consideration of his younger brother, who made his reputation as a strong arm in the field, not a strong head in the court. When he first took up the post of chancellor I would have judged the elder dy Jironal no more susceptible to the temptations of pride and greed than any other high lord of Chalion with a clan to provide for."

Faint enough praise, that. And yet...

"Yet I think..." Umegat seemed to continue Cazaril's very thought, his eyes rising to meet his guest's, "the curse has done him no good either."

"So... getting rid of dy Jironal is not the solution to Orico's woes? Another such man, perhaps worse, would simply rise in his place?"

Umegat opened his hands. "The curse takes a hundred forms, twisting each good thing that should be Orico's according to the weaknesses of its nature. A wife grown barren instead of fertile. A chief advisor corrupt instead of loyal. Friends fickle instead of true, food that sickens instead of strengthening, and on and on."

A secretary-tutor grown cowardly and foolish instead of brave and wise? Or maybe just fey and mad... If any man who came within the curse's ambit was vulnerable, was he destined to become Iselle's plague, as dy Jironal was Orico's? "And Teidez, and Iselle—must all her choices fall out as ill as Orico's, or does he bear a special burden, being the roya?"

"I think the curse has grown worse for Orico over time." The Roknari's gray eyes narrowed. "You have asked me a dozen questions, Lord Cazaril. Allow me to ask you one. How came you into the service of Royesse Iselle?"

Cazaril opened his mouth and sat back, his mind jumping first to the day the Provincara had ambushed him with her offer of employment. But no, before that came... and before that came... He found himself instead telling Umegat of the day a soldier of the Daughter astride a nervy horse had dropped a gold coin in the mud, and how he had arrived in Valenda. Umegat brewed tea at the little fire and pushed a steaming mug in front of Cazaril, who paused only to lubricate his drying throat. Cazaril described how Iselle had discomfited the crooked judge on the Daughter's Day, and, at length, how they had all come to Cardegoss.

Umegat pulled on his queue. "Do you think your steps were fated from that far back? Disturbing. But the gods are parsimonious, and take their chances where they can find them."

"If the gods are making this path for me, then where is my free will? No, it cannot be!"

"Ah." Umegat brightened at this thorny theological point. "I have had another thought on such fates, that denies neither gods nor men. Perhaps, instead of controlling every step, the gods have started a hundred or a thousand Cazarils and Umegats down this road. And only those arrive who choose to."

"But am I the first to arrive, or the last?"

"Well," said Umegat dryly, "I can promise you you're not the first."