The Curse of Chalion

Cazaril grunted understanding. After a little time spent digesting this, he said suddenly, "But if the gods have given you to Orico, and me to Iselle—though I think Someone has made a holy mistake—who is given for the protection of Teidez? Shouldn't there be three of us? A man of the Brother, surely, though whether tool or saint or fool I know not—or have all the boy's hundred destined protectors fallen by the roadside, one by one? Maybe the man is just not here yet." A new thought robbed Cazaril of breath. "Maybe it was supposed to have been dy Sanda." He leaned forward, burying his face in his hands. "If I stay here talking theology with you much longer, I swear I'll end up drinking myself blind again, just to make my brain stop spinning round and round inside my skull."

"Addiction to drink is actually a fairly common hazard, among divines," said Umegat.

"I begin to see why." Cazaril tilted back his head to catch the last trickle of tea, grown cold in his cup, and set it down. "Umegat... if I must ask of every action not only if it is wise or good, but also if it's the one I'm supposed to choose, I shall go mad. Madder. I'll end up curled in a corner not doing anything at all, except maybe mumbling and weeping."

Umegat chuckled—cruelly, Cazaril thought—but then shook his head. "You cannot outguess the gods. Hold to virtue—if you can identify it—and trust that the duty set before you is the duty desired of you. And that the talents given to you are the talents you should place in the gods' service. Believe that the gods ask for nothing back that they have not first lent to you. Not even your life."

Cazaril rubbed his face, and inhaled. "Then I shall bend all my efforts to promoting this marriage of Iselle's, to break the hold of the curse upon her. I must trust my reason, or why else did the goddess choose a reasonable man for Iselle's guardian?" Though he added under his breath, "At least, I used to be a reasonable man..." He nodded, far more firmly than he felt, and pushed back his chair. "Pray for me, Umegat."

"Every hour, my lord."

IT WAS GROWING DARK WHEN LADY BETRIZ BROUGHT a taper into Cazaril's office and drifted about for a moment lighting his reading candles in their glass vases. He smiled and nodded thanks. She smiled back and blew out her taper, but then paused, not yet returning to the women's chambers. She stood, Cazaril observed, in the same spot where they had parted the night of Dondo's death.

"Things seem to be settling down a little now, thank the gods," she remarked.

"Yes. A little." Cazaril laid down his quill.

"I begin to believe all will be well."

"Yes." His stomach cramped. No.

A long pause. He picked up his quill again, and dipped it, although he had nothing more to write.

"Cazaril, must you believe you are about to die in order to bring yourself to kiss a lady?" she demanded abruptly.

He ducked his head, flushing, and cleared his throat. "My deepest apologies, Lady Betriz. It won't happen again."

He dared not look up, lest she try anew to break through his fragile barriers. Lest she succeed. Oh, Betriz, do not sacrifice your dignity to my futility!

Her voice grew stiff. "I'm very sorry to hear that, Castillar."

He kept his eyes on his ledger as her footsteps retreated.

* * *

SEVERAL DAYS PASSED, AS ISELLE CONTINUED HER campaign upon Orico. Several nights passed, made ghastly for Cazaril by the howls of Dondo's soul in its private torment. This intestinal visitation did indeed prove to be nightly, a quarter of an hour reprising the terror of that death. Cazaril could not fall to sleep before the midnight interlude, in sick apprehension, nor for long after it, in shaken resonance, and his face grew gray with fatigue. The blurry old phantasms began to seem pleasant pets by comparison. There was no way he could drink enough wine, nightly, to sleep through it, so he set himself to endure.

Orico endured his sister's visitations with less fortitude. He took to avoiding her in increasingly bizarre ways, but she broke in upon him anyway, in chamber, kitchen, and once, to Nan dy Vrit's scandal, his steam bath. The day he rode out to his hunting lodge in the oak woods at dawn, Iselle followed promptly after breakfast. Cazaril was relieved to note that his own spectral retinue fell behind as they rode out of the Zangre, as though bound to their place of death.