The Curse of Chalion

Dy Tagille dragged the corpse a little way off and knelt in front of Cazaril, staring fearfully at his skewered stomach and then into his face. "Lord Cazaril, we must try to draw this sword from you. Best we do it at once."

"No... wait..." Cazaril had once seen a man plugged with a crossbow bolt live for half an hour, until the bolt was drawn out; his blood had gushed forth then, and he'd died. "I want to see Lady Betriz first."

"My lord, you cannot sit there with a sword stuck through you!"

"Well," said Cazaril reasonably, "I surely cannot move ..." Trying to talk made him pant. Not good. He was shivering and very cold. But the throbbing pain was not as devastating as he'd expected, probably because he'd managed to hold so still. As long as he held very still, it wasn't much worse than Dondo's clawings.

Other men arrived in the courtyard. Babble and noise and cries from the wounded washed between the walls, and tales repeated over and over in rising voices. Cazaril ignored it all, taken up with his pebble again. He wondered where it had come from, how it had arrived there. What it had been before it was a pebble. A rock? A mountain? Where? For how many years? It filled his mind. And if a pebble could fill his mind, what might a mountain do? The gods held mountains in their minds, and all else besides, all at once. Everything, with the same attention he gave to one thing. He had seen that, through the Lady's eyes. If it had endured for longer than that infinitesimal blink, he thought his soul would have burst. As it was he felt strangely stretched. Had that glimpse been a gift, or just a careless chance?

"Cazaril?"

A trembling voice, the voice he had been waiting for. He looked up. If the pebble was amazing, Betriz's face was astounding. The structure of her nose alone could have held him entranced for hours. He abandoned the pebble at once for this better entertainment. But water welled up, shimmering, in her brown eyes, and her face was drained of color. That wasn't right. Worst of all, her dimples had gone into hiding.

"There you are," he said happily. His voice was a muzzy croak. "Kiss me now."

She gulped, knelt, shuffled up to him on her knees, and stretched her neck. Her lips were warm. The perfume of her mouth was nothing at all like a goddess's, but like a human woman's, and very good withal. His lips were cold, and he pressed them to hers as much to borrow her heat and youth as anything. So. He'd been swimming in miracle every day of his life, and hadn't even known it.

He eased his head back. "All right." He did not add, That's enough, because it wasn't. "You can draw the sword out now."

Men moved around him, mostly worried-looking strangers. Betriz rubbed her face, undid the frogs of his tunic, and stood and hovered. Someone gripped his shoulders. A page proffered a folded pad to clap to his wound, and someone else held lengths of bandages ready to wrap his torso.

Cazaril squinted in uncertainty. Betriz was here: therefore, Iselle must be, must be... "Iselle? Bergon?"

"I'm here, Lord Caz." Iselle's voice came off to his side.

She moved around in front of him, staring at him in extreme dismay. She had shed her heavily embroidered outer robes in her flight, and still seemed a trifle breathless. She had also shed the black cloak of the curse... had she not? Yes, he decided. His inner vision was darkening, but he did not mistake this.

"Bergon is with my uncle," she continued, "helping to clear dy Jironal's remaining men from the area." Her voice was firm in its disregard of the tears running down her face.

"The black shadow is lifted," he told her, "from you and Bergon. From everyone."

"How?"

"I'll tell you all about it, if I live."

"Cazaril!"

He grinned briefly at the familiar, exasperated cadences around his name.

"You live, then!" Her voice wavered. "I—I command you!"

Dy Tagille knelt in front of Cazaril.

Cazaril gave him a short nod. "Draw it."

"Very straight and smoothly, Lord dy Tagille," Iselle instructed tensely, "so as not to cut him any worse."

"Aye, my lady." Dy Tagille licked his lips in apprehension and grasped the sword's hilt.

"Carefully," gasped Cazaril, "but not quite so slowly, please ..."

The blade left him; a warm gush of liquid spurted from the mouth of his wound after it. Cazaril had hoped to pass out, but he only swayed as pads were clapped to him and held hard fore and aft. He stared down expecting to see his lap awash in blood, but no flood of red met his sight; it was a clear liquid, merely tinged with pink. Sword must have lanced my tumor. Which was not, it appeared, and the Bastard fry Rojeras for inflicting that nightmare upon him, stuffed with some grotesque demon fetus after all. He tried not to think, At least not anymore. A murmur of astonishment passed among the ring of watchers as the scent of celestial flowers from this exudation filled the air.