Free Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold Page B

was not given to conform to the fruitful relations between men and women overseen by the great Four, but to seek their own sex. At this distance in time, space, and sin it was almost amusing to watch dy Cabon's face as he unraveled her polite description.
    "That must have been . . . rather difficult for you, as a young bride."
    "Then, yes," she admitted. "Now . . ." She held out her hand and opened it, as if letting sand pass through her fingers. "It is beside the point. Far more difficult was my discovery that since the calamitous death of Ias's father, Roya Fonsa, a great and strange curse had been laid upon the royal house of Chalion. And that I had brought my children into it, unknowing. Not told, not warned."
    Dy Cabon's lips made an O.
    "I had prophetic dreams. Nightmares. For a time, I thought I was going mad." For a time, Ias and dy Lutez had left her in that terror, alone, uncomforted. It had seemed then, and still seemed now, a greater betrayal than any trivial sweaty graspings under the sheets could ever be. "I prayed and prayed to the gods. And my prayers were answered, dy Cabon. I spoke to the Mother face-to-face, as close as I am to you now." She shivered still in memory of that overwhelming incandescence.
    "A great blessing," he breathed in awe.
    She shook her head. "A great woe. Upon the instruction of the gods, as given to me, we—dy Lutez, and Ias, and I—planned a perilous ritual to break the curse, to send it back to the gods from whom it had once been spilled. But we—
I
, in my anxiety and fear, made a mistake, a great and willful mistake, and dy Lutez died in the midst of it as a direct result. Sorcery, miracle, call it what you will, the ritual failed, the gods withdrew from me ... Ias in his panic put the treason rumor about, to account for the death. That bright star of his court, his best beloved, murdered, buried—then defamed, which was all but to be murdered again, for dy Lutez had loved his high honor better than his life."
    Dy Cabon's brow wrinkled. "But. . . was not this posthumous slander of Lord dy Lutez by your husband equally a slander of you, lady?"
    Ista faltered at this unconsidered view. "Ias knew the truth. What other opinion mattered? That the world should think me, falsely, an adulteress, seemed far less hideous than that it should know me truly a murderess. But Ias died of grief thereafter, deserting me, leaving me to wail in the ashes of the disaster, mind-fogged and accursed still."
    "How old were you?" asked dy Cabon.
    "Nineteen when it began. Twenty-two when it ended." She frowned. When had that begun to seem so ...
    "You were very young for so great a burden," he offered, voicing almost her own thought.
    Her lips thinned in denial. "Officers like Ferda and Foix are sent to fight and die at no greater age. I was older then than Iselle is now, who bears the whole of the royacy of Chalion upon her slim shoulders, not just the woman's half."
    "But not alone. She has great courtiers, and Royse-Consort Bergon."
    "Ias had dy Lutez."
    "Whom
did you
have, lady?"
    Ista fell silent. She could not remember. Had she truly been so alone? She shook her head, drew breath. "Another generation brought another man, humbler and greater than dy Lutez, of deeper mind, more equal to the task. The curse was broken, but not by me. Yet not before my son Teidez died of it as well—of the curse, of my failure to lift it when he was a child, of betrayal by and of those who should have protected and guided him. Three years ago, by the labor and sacrifice of others, I was released from my long bondage. Into the silence of my life in Valenda. Unbearable silence. I am not
old
—"
    Dy Cabon waved his plump hands in protest. "Indeed, no, my lady! You are quite lovely still!"
    She made a sharp gesture, cutting off his misconstrual. "My mother was forty when I was born, her last child. I am forty now, in this ill-made spring of her death. One-half my life lies behind me, and half of
that
stolen from me by