The Curse of Chalion

After supper, Teidez's fever rose even higher. He stopped fighting and complaining, and fell into lassitude. A couple of hours before midnight, he seemed to fall to sleep. Iselle and Betriz at last left the royse's antechamber and climbed to their own rooms for some rest.

Close to midnight, unable to sleep for sake of his usual anticipations, Cazaril again went down the corridor to Teidez's chambers. The chief physician, going to wake the boy to administer some fever-reducing syrup, fresh-concocted and delivered by a panting acolyte, found that Teidez could not be roused.

Cazaril trudged up the stairs to report this to a sleepy Nan dy Vrit.

"Well, there's naught Iselle can do about it," opined Nan. "She's just dropped off, poor girl. Can we not let her sleep?"

Cazaril hesitated, then said, "No."

So the two tired, worried young women dressed themselves again and trooped back down to Teidez's crowded sitting room. Chancellor dy Jironal arrived, fetched from Jironal Palace.

Dy Jironal frowned at Cazaril, and bowed to Iselle. "Royesse. This sickroom is no place for you." His sour glance back to Cazaril silently added, Or you.

Iselle's eyes narrowed, but she replied in a quiet, dignified voice, "None here has a better right. Or a greater duty." After a brief pause, she added, "And I must bear witness on my mother's behalf."

Dy Jironal inhaled, then apparently thought better of whatever he'd been about to say. He might profitably save the clash of wills for some other time and place, Cazaril thought. There would be opportunities enough.

Cold compresses failed to lower Teidez's fever, and needle pricks failed to rouse him. His anxious attendants were thrown into a flurry when he had a brief seizure. His breathing became even more rasping and labored than the unconscious Umegat's had been. Out in the corridor, a quintet of cantors, one voice from each of the five orders, sang prayers; their voices blended and echoed, a heartbreakingly beautiful background of sound to these dreadful doings.

The harmonies paused. In that moment, Cazaril realized the labored breathing from the bedchamber beyond had stopped. Everyone fell silent in the face of that silence. One of the several attendant physicians, his face drained and wet with tears, came to the antechamber and called in dy Jironal and Iselle for witnesses. Voices rose and fell, very soft and low, from Teidez's bedchamber for a moment or two.

Both were pale when they came out again. Dy Jironal was pale and shocked; even to the last, Cazaril realized, the man had been expecting Teidez to pull through and recover. Iselle was pale and nearly expressionless. The black shadow boiled thickly about her.

Every face in the antechamber turned toward her, like compass needles swinging. The royacy of Chalion had a new Heiress.

Iselle's eyes, though reddened with fatigue and grief, were dry. Betriz, going to support her, dashed tears from the corners of hers. It was a little hard to tell which young woman leaned upon the other.

Chancellor dy Jironal cleared his throat. "I will take word of this bereavement to Orico." Belatedly, he added, "Allow me to serve you in this, Royesse."

"Yes..." Iselle looked around the chamber a little blindly. "Let all these good people go about their tasks."

Dy Jironal's brows drew down, as though a hundred thoughts flitted behind his eyes, and he scarcely knew which to grasp first. He glanced at Betriz, and at Cazaril. "Your household... your household must be increased to match your new dignity. I shall see to it."

"I cannot think about all these things now. Tomorrow will be soon enough. For tonight, my lord Chancellor, please leave me to my sorrow."

"Of course, Royesse." Dy Jironal bowed, and made to depart.

"Oh," Iselle added, "pray do not dispatch any courier to my mother until I can write a letter to include."

In the doorway, dy Jironal paused and gave another half bow in acknowledgment. "Certainly."

As Betriz escorted Iselle out, the royesse murmured to Cazaril in passing, "Cazaril, ‘tend on me in half an hour. I must think."

Cazaril bent his head.

The crowd of courtiers in the antechamber and sitting room dispersed, but for Teidez's secretary, who stood looking bereft and useless. Only the acolytes and servants whose task it now was to wash and prepare the royse's body remained. The stunned and distraught chorus of cantors sang one last prayer, this time a threnody for the passage of the dead, their voices choked and wavering, and then they, too, turned to make their way out.

Cazaril was not sure if his head or his belly ached more. He fled into his own chamber at the end of the hallway, shut the door behind him, and braced himself for Dondo's nightly onslaught, not, his knotting stomach told him, to be any further delayed.