The Curse of Chalion

The man shook his head. "Hard to say. Somewhere in the bottoms, maybe." The lower end of Cardegoss, both socially and topographically, huddled on both sides of the wall that ran between the two rivers. "There are only half a dozen places someone might pitch a body over the town walls and be sure the stream would take it off. Some are more lonely than others. When did anyone here see him last?"

"I saw him at supper," said Cazaril. "He said nothing to me about going into town." There were a couple of places right here in the Zangre where a body might also be pitched into the rivers below... . "Has he broken bones?"

"Not as I felt, sir," said the constable's man. Indeed, the pale corpse did not show great bruises.

Inquiry of the castle guards disclosed that dy Sanda had left the Zangre, alone and on foot, about the mid-watch last night. Cazaril gave up a budding plan to check every foot of the castle's great lengths of corridors and niches for new bloodstains. Later in the afternoon the constable's men found three people who'd said they'd seen the royse's secretary drinking in a tavern in the bottoms, and depart alone; one swore he'd left staggering drunk. That witness, Cazaril would have liked to have had alone for a time in one of the Zangre's stony, scream-absorbing cells off the old, old tunnels going down to the rivers. Some better kind of truth might have been pounded out of him there. Cazaril had never seen dy Sanda drink to drunkenness, ever.

It fell to Cazaril to inventory and pack dy Sanda's meager pile of worldly goods, to be sent off by carter to the man's surviving older brother somewhere in the provinces of Chalion. While the city constable's men searched the bottoms, futilely, Cazaril was sure, for the supposed footpads, Cazaril turned out every scrap of paper in dy Sanda's room. But whatever lying assignation had lured him to the bottoms, he'd either received verbally or taken with him.

Dy Sanda having no relatives near enough to wait upon, the funeral was held the next day. The services were somberly graced by both the royse and royesse and their households, so a few courtiers anxious for their favor likewise attended. The ceremony of departure, held in the Son's chamber off the main courtyard of the temple, was brief. It was borne in upon Cazaril what a lonely man dy Sanda had been. No friends thronged to the head of his bier to speak long eulogies for each other's comfort. Only Cazaril spoke a few formal words of regret on behalf of the royesse, managing to get through them without the embarrassment of referring to the paper, upon which he had so hastily composed them that morning, tucked in his sleeve.

Cazaril stood down from the bier to make way for the blessing of the animals, going to stand with the little crowd of mourners before the altar. Acolytes, dressed each in the colors of their chosen gods, brought in their creatures and stood round the bier at five evenly spaced points. In country temples, the most motley assortment of animals was used for this rite; Cazaril had once seen it carried through—successfully—for the dead daughter of a poor man by a single overworked acolyte with a basket of five kittens with colored ribbons tied round their necks. The Roknari often used fish, though in the number of four, not five; the Quadrene divines marked them with dye and interpreted the will of the gods by the patterns they made swimming about in a tub. Whatever the means used, the omen was the one tiny miracle the gods granted every person, no matter how humble, at their last passing.

The temple of Cardegoss had the resources to command the most beautiful of sacred animals, selected for appropriate color and gender. The Daughter's acolyte in her blue robes had a fine female crested blue jay, new-hatched last spring. The Mother's woman in green held on her arm a great green bird, close relative, Cazaril thought, to Umegat's prize in the roya's menagerie. The acolyte of the Son in his red-orange robes led a glorious young dog-fox, whose burnished coat seemed to glow like fire in the somber shadows of the echoing, vaulted chamber. The Father's acolyte, in gray, was led in by a stout, elderly, and immensely dignified gray wolf. Cazaril expected the Bastard's acolyte in her white robes to bear one of Fonsa's sacred crows, but instead she cradled a pair of plump, inquisitive-looking white rats in her arms.

The divine prostrated himself for the gods to make their sign, then stood back at dy Sanda's head. The brightly robed acolytes each in turn urged their creatures forward. At a jerk of the acolyte's wrist the blue jay fluttered up, but then back down to her shoulder, as did the Mother's green bird. The dog-fox, released from its copper chain, sniffed, trotted to the bier, whined, hopped up, and curled itself at dy Sanda's side. It rested its muzzle over the dead man's heart, and sighed deeply.