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"And me."
"Ias's was not noted as a fortunate reign for Chalion," he conceded warily.
"Nor Orico's."
"Ias the Unlucky. Orico the Impotent. The nicknames given by the vulgar do not
touch the half of it. Ias knew of his curse, knew its origin and its nature,
though he did not tell even Orico until he lay on his deathbed. But he shared
the knowledge with Arvol dy Lutez, his companion from boyhood, marshal,
chancellor, right arm. Possibly, as Orico did later with his own favorites,
Ias was trying to use Arvol as a
tongs by which to handle the affairs of Chalion without spilling his evil geas
upon them. Not that the ploy worked. But it suited Arvol dy Lutez's ambitions
and huge energies well enough. And his arrogance. I
grant, your father did love Ias in his way. Ias worshipped him, and was
utterly dependent upon his judgment. Arvol even selected me for him."
Arhys pulled on his close-trimmed beard. "The rumor I have heard bruited by
the envious that they were, ah, more intimate than boon companions, I take to
be political slander?"
"No," she said simply. "They were lovers for years, as all Cardegoss knew but
did not speak of outside the capital walls. My own mother told me, just before
I wed, so I would not step into it unawares. I
thought her callous, then. Now I think her wise. And worried. Looking back, I
think it also was an offer to let me back out, though I missed that
implication entirely at the time. Yet for all her candid warnings
which, I found later, Lord dy Lutez had insisted she give me to prevent
trouble for him, mostly, I
suspect, though also for Ias I did not understand what it meant. How could I a
romantic virgin, overwhelmed by what seemed a great victory on the field of
love, to be chosen as bride by the roya himself? I nodded and agreed, anxious
to seem sophisticated and sensible."
"Oh," he said, very quietly.
"So if ever you thought your mother untrue to her vows, to take Illvin's
father to her bed, be assured she was not the first dy Lutez to break them. I
suspect her mother was less shrewd and honest than mine, preparing her for her
high marriage. Or less informed."
His brows climbed in reflection. "That accounts for ... much, that I did not
understand as a boy. I thought my father had cast her off, in anger and
humiliation, and that was why he never came here. I never thought that she had
cast him off."
"Oh, I'm quite sure that Lord dy Lutez was thoroughly offended by her
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defection," Ista said. "No matter how justified. His pride would keep him from
returning, but his sense of justice, to give him credit, likely also kept him
from pursuing any vengeance. Or perhaps it was shame. I can hope." She added
dryly, "In any case, he still had her property to add to his vast holdings,
for compensation of his wounds."
He eyed her. "You thought him greedy."
"No man accumulates all that he did by chance. Yet I would not call it greed,
exactly, for he scarcely knew all he held, and a greedy man numbers each
coin."
"What would you call it, then?"
Ista's brows pinched in. "Consolation," she tried at last. "His possessions
were a magic mirror, to reflect him the size he wished to be."
"That," he said after a moment, "is a fearsome judgment, Royina."
She bent her head in an acknowledging nod. "He was a very complex man." She
drew breath, began again. "Arvol and Ias did not betray me by concealing their
love. They betrayed me by concealing the curse. I entered into marriage with
Ias unaware of my danger, or the danger to my children-to-be. The visions
started when I became pregnant with Iselle. The gods, trying to break in upon
me. I thought I was going mad. And Ias and dy Lutez let me go on thinking
that. For two years."
He jerked a little at the sudden fierceness in her voice. "That seems . . .
most unkind."
"That was cowardice.
And contempt for my wits and spine. They mired me in the consequences of their
secret, then refused to trust me with its cause. I was a mere girl, you see,
unfit to bear such a burden.
Though not unfit to bear Ias's children into that darkness. Except the gods
did not seem to regard me as unfit. For it was me
They came to. Not Ias. Not dy Lutez. Me."
Her lips twisted. "I wonder in retrospect how put out Arvol was by that? He
would have been the sole shining hero to save Ias, if he could. It was his
accustomed role. And indeed, for a while it did appear that the gods had
assigned it to him.
"At last do even the gods grow impatient with our obtuseness? the Mother of
Summer Herself appeared to me, not in dream but in waking vision. I was
prostrated I had not yet learned to be suspicious of the gods. She told me
that the curse might be broken and carried out of the world by a man who would
lay down his life three times for the blighted House of Chalion. Being young,
and frenzied with anxiety for my babies, I took Her words too literally, and
concluded that She meant me to devise a perilous rite to accomplish this
paradox."
"Perilous indeed. And, um . . ." His brow wrinkled. "Paradoxical."
"I told all to Ias and Arvol, and we took counsel together. Arvol, afflicted
by our weeping, volunteered to attempt the hero's role. We hit upon drowning
as the method, for men were known to come back from that death, sometimes. And
it does not disfigure. Arvol studied it, collected tales, investigated victims
both lost and saved. In a cavern beneath the Zangre, we set up the cask, the
ropes, the winch.
The altars to all the gods. Arvol let himself be stripped, bound, lowered
upside down, until his struggles ceased, until the light of his soul went out
to my inner eye."
He began to speak; she held up her hand, to block the misunderstanding. "No.
Not yet. We drew him out pressed the water from his throat, pounded on his
heart, cried out our prayers, until he choked and breathed again.
And I could see the crack in the curse.
"We had planned the ritual three nights in succession. On the second night,
all went the same, until his hair brushed the surface of the water, and he
gasped out to stop, he could not bear it. He cried I was trying to assassinate
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