The Curse of Chalion

"What's this?" Cazaril waved eagerly at the papers. "Have you your writing back?"

Umegat grimaced. "So far, I seem to be back to age five. Would that some of the rest of me was so rejuvenated." He tilted the page to show a labored exercise of crudely drawn letters. "I keep putting them back in my mind, and they keep falling out again. My hand has lost its cleverness for the quill—and yet I can still play the lute nearly as badly as ever! The physician insists that I am improving, and I suppose it is so, for I could not do so little as this a month ago. The words scuttle about on the page like crabs, but every so often I catch one." He glanced up, and shrugged away his struggles. "But you! Great doings in Taryoon, were they not? Mendenal says you had a sword stuck through you."

"Punctured front to back," admitted Cazaril. "But it carved out Lord Dondo and the demon, which made it altogether worth the pain. The Lady spared me from the killing fever, after."

Umegat glanced after Daris. "Then you got off lightly."

"Miraculously so."

Umegat leaned a little forward across the table and gazed closely into his face. "Hm. Hm. You've been keeping high company, I see."

"Have you your second sight back?" asked Cazaril, startled.

"No. It's just a look a man gets, that one learns to recognize."

Indeed. Umegat had it, too. It seemed that if a man was god-touched, and yet not pushed altogether off-balance, it left him mysteriously centered thereafter. "You have seen your god, too." It was not a question.

"Once or twice," Umegat admitted.

"How long does it take to recover?"

"I'm not sure yet." Umegat rubbed his lips thoughtfully, studying Cazaril. "Tell me—if you can—what you saw... ?"

It was not just the learned theologian talking shop; Cazaril saw the flash of fathomless god-hunger in the Roknari's gray eyes. Do I look like that, when I speak of Her? No wonder men look at me strangely.

Cazaril told the tale, starting from his precipitate departure from Cardegoss riding to the royesse's ordering. Tea arrived, was consumed, and the cups refilled before he came to the end of it. Daris hunkered in the doorway, listening; Cazaril supposed he need not ask after the ex-groom's discretion. When he tried to describe his gathering-in by the Lady, he became tongue-tangled. Umegat hung on his halting words, lips parted.

"Poetry—poetry might do it," said Cazaril. "I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I ca

"Hm," said Umegat. "I tried to recapture the god with music, for a time, after my first... experience. I had not the gift, alas."

Cazaril nodded. He asked diffidently, "Is there anything you—either of you—need, that I can command? Iselle has yesterday made me chancellor of Chalion, so I suppose I can command, well, rather a lot."

Umegat's brows flicked up; he favored Cazaril with a little congratulatory bow, from his seat. "That was well done of the young royina."

Cazaril grimaced. "I keep thinking about dead men's boots, actually."

Umegat's smile glimmered. "I understand. As for us, the Temple cares for its ex-saints reasonably well, and supplies us all that we can presently use. I like these rooms, this city, this spring air, my company. I hope the god will yet grant me an interesting task or two, before I'm done. Although, by preference, not with animals. Or royalty."

Cazaril made a motion of sympathy. "I suppose you knew poor Orico as well as almost anyone, except perhaps Sara."

"I saw him nearly every day for six years. He spoke to me most frankly, toward the end. I hope I was a consolation to him."

Cazaril hesitated. "For what it's worth, I came to the conclusion that he was something of a hero."

Umegat nodded briefly. "So did I. In a frustrating sort of way. He was a sacrifice, surely." He sighed. "Well, it is a particular sin to permit grief for what is gone to poison the praise for what blessings remain to us."

The tongueless man rose from his silent spot to take away the tea things.

"Thank you, Daris," said Umegat, and patted the hand that touched him briefly on the shoulder; Daris gathered up the cups and plates and padded off.

Cazaril stared curiously after him. "Have you known him long?"

"About twenty years."

"Then he was not just your assistant in the menagerie..." Cazaril lowered his voice. "Was he martyred back then?"

"No. Not yet."

"Oh."

Umegat smiled. "Don't look so glum, Lord Cazaril. We get better. That was yesterday. This is today. I shall ask his permission to tell you the tale of it sometime."

"I should be honored with his confidence."

"All is well, and if it's not, then at least each day brings us closer to our god."

"I had noticed that. I had a little trouble tracking time, the first few days after... after I saw the Lady. Time, and scale, both altered out of reckoning."

A light knock sounded upon the chamber door. Daris emerged from the other room and went to admit a white-smocked young dedicat who held a book in her hand.

"Ah." Umegat brightened. "It is my reader. Make your bow to the Lord Chancellor, Dedicat." He added in explanation, "They send a delinquent dedicat to read to me for an hour a day, as a light punishment for small infractions of the house rules. Have you decided what rule you mean to break tomorrow, girl?"

The dedicat gri

"Well if you run out of ideas, I will harken back to my youth and see if I can't remember a few more."

The dedicat tipped the book toward Cazaril. "I thought I would be sent to read dull theology to the divine, but instead he wanted this book of tales."

Cazaril glanced over the volume, an Ibran import judging by the printer's mark, with interest.

"It's a fine conceit, " said Umegat. "The author follows a group of travelers to a pilgrimage shrine, and has each one tell his or her tale in turn. Very, ah, holy."

"Actually, my lord," the dedicat whispered, "some of them are very lewd."

"I see I must dust off Ordol's sermon on the lessons of the flesh. I have promised the dedicat time off from the Bastard's penances for her blushes. I fear she believes me." Umegat smiled.

"I, ah... should be very pleased to borrow that book, when you're finished with it," Cazaril said hopefully.

"I'll have it sent up to you, my lord."

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 su

"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 ca