The Curse of Chalion

Cazaril made his farewells. He recrossed the five-sided Temple Square and headed uphill, but turned aside before the Zangre came in sight and made his way to Provincar dy Baocia's town palace. The blocky old stone building resembled Jironal Palace, though much smaller, with no windows on its lower floor, and its next floor's casements protected by wrought-iron grilles. It had been reopened not only for its lord and lady but also the old Provincara and Lady Ista, who had arrived from Valenda. Full to bursting, its former sullen empty silence was turned to bustle. Cazaril stated his rank and business to a bowing porter, and was whisked inside without question or delay.

The porter led him to a high sunny chamber at the back of the house. Here he found Dowager Royina Ista sitting out on a little iron-railed balcony overlooking the small herb garden and stable mews. She dismissed her attendant woman and gestured Cazaril to the vacated chair, almost knee to knee with her. Ista's dun hair was neatly braided today, wreathing her head; both her face and her dress seemed somehow crisper, more clearly defined than Cazaril had ever seen them before.

"This is a pleasant place," Cazaril observed, easing himself down in the chair.

"Yes, I like this room. It is the one I had when I was a girl, when my father brought us up to the capital with him, which was not often. Best of all, I cannot see the Zangre from it." She gazed down into the domestic square of garden, embroidered with green, protected and contained.

"You came to the banquet there last night." He had only been able to exchange a few formal words with her in that company, Ista merely congratulating him on his chancellorship and his betrothal, and departing early "You looked very well, too, I must say. I could see Iselle was gratified."

She inclined her head. "I eat there to please her. I do not care to sleep there."

"I suppose the ghosts are still about. I cannot see them now, to my great relief."

"Nor I, with sight or second sight, but I feel them as a chill in the walls. Or perhaps it's just the memory of them that chills me." She rubbed her arms as if to warm them. "I abhor the Zangre."

"I understand the poor ghosts much better now than when they first terrified me," said Cazaril diffidently. "I thought their exile and erosion was a rejection by the gods, at first, a damnation, but now I know it for a mercy. When the souls are taken up, they remember themselves... the minds possess their lives all whole, all at once, as the gods do, with nearly the terrible clarity that matter remembers itself. For some... for some that heaven would be as unbearable as any hell, and so the gods release them to forgetfulness."

"Forgetfulness. That smudged oblivion seems a very heaven to me now. I pray to be such a ghost, I think."

I fear it is a mercy you shall be denied. Cazaril cleared his throat. "You know the curse is lifted off of Iselle and Bergon, and all, and banished out of Chalion?"

"Yes. Iselle has told me of it, to the limit of her understanding, but I knew it when it happened. My ladies were dressing me to go down to the Daughter's Day morning prayers. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear or feel, but it was as though a fog had lifted from my mind. I did not realize how closely it had cloaked me round, like a clammy mist on the skin of my soul, till it was lifted. I was sorry then, for I thought it meant you had died."

"Died indeed, but the Lady put me back into the world. Well, into my body. My friend Palli would have it that She put me back in upside down." His smile flickered.

Ista looked away. "The curse's lifting made my pain more clear, and yet more distant. It felt very strange."

He cleared his throat. "You were right, Lady Ista, about the prophecy. The three deaths. I was wrong with my marriage scheme, wrong and determined to be so, because I was afraid. Your way seemed too hard. And yet it came right despite myself, in the end, by the Lady's grace."

She nodded. "I would have done it myself, if I could have. My sacrifice was evidently not deemed acceptable." Bitterness tinged her voice.

"It was not a matter of—that's not the reason," protested Cazaril. "Well, it is but it isn't. It has to do with the shape of your soul, not its worthiness. You have to make a cup of yourself, to receive that pouring out. You are a sword. You were always a sword. Like your mother and your daughter, too—steel spines run in the women of your family. I realize now why I never saw saints, before. The world does not crash upon their wills like waves upon a rock, or part around them like the wake of a ship. Instead they are supple, and swim through the world as silently as fishes."

Her brows rose at him, though whether in agreement, disagreement, or some polite irony he was not sure.

"Where will you go now?" he asked her. "Now that you are better, that is."