Paladin of Souls (The Chalion Series Book 2)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

His soul was gray, strangely pale, off center, as if it lagged a little after him and left a trail of smoke.

“Lord Arhys,” said Ista. “How long have you been dead?”

I was sure she was unnatural by then

my wits came back to me. I finally remembered where I’d seen her before, except that it wasn’t quite her

his wife. A princess of Jokona, granddaughter of the Golden General himself,

Ista’s hands were trembling. She hid them in her skirt.

“Umerue was a sorceress,” Ista stated.

demons thrive on misfortune and disorder; it is their nature, and the magic they lend partakes of that nature.

Temple tells us that demons work their wonders at a terrible cost.

Learned dy Cabon told me that the demon always turns the tables on its mount, given enough time.

“Demon magic—the divines say—invariably engenders more chaos than it ever produces order.

use the demon magic according to its nature, and not against it, and yet effect good.

I think this demon has acquired the gift of speech.

“Spare us, Shining One!” she shrieked. Everyone in the room flinched at the sharp cry.

“Bles’t One,” he mumbled. “Free him. Free us all.”

“How could a princess of Jokona, a devout Quadrene, come by a demon in the first place?

“The news of this—at least, the news that a highborn lady of Jokona’s court harbored a demon and attempted to suborn a Chalionese fortress by sorcery

Her eye fell on Goram, rocking and clenching his hands again. Outwardly, a grizzled aging menial. Inwardly . . . stripped, plundered, burned out like some village ravaged by retreating troops.

Goram less than most, as he’d plainly lost most of his wits and memory. I’d diagnose a knock to the head in his last battle, though there’s no scar, so it might have been some other ill treatment, or fever.

Ista drew breath. “Are you aware that he is demon-gnawed?”

The march of Rauma’s bastard half sister, I was told by one of the women captives.” Raped, tortured, and burned alive in the rubble of the Bastard’s Tower. Thus do the gods reward Their servants.

“He kissed me on the brow, here, as once His Mother did, and laid an unwelcome burden thereupon.

Umerue may have been a princess once, but by the time she came here, she was a demon-eaten sorceress.

“In a secret scrambling fight, both Umerue and Lord Arhys were slain.”

Some distorted species of death magic—

“So that’s what I felt when I saw her,” whispered Foix, sounding much enlightened. “Another demon.”

When he dies, his brother ends, and Cattilara, I believe, will be swallowed by her demon.”

Gone. It was like watching him die, every day. She did not desire the practice.

But then he kissed me a second time, on—in—my mouth. More deeply and disturbingly. Learned, tell me, what was the meaning of that second kiss? You must know—you were right there.”

The mouth is the Bastard’s own theological sign and signifier upon our bodies, as the thumbs are upon our hands.

The kiss was clearly something else, some other gift or burden.”

“That I was sent here, in answer to prayers, Illvin’s among others, probably. The Bastard dared me, by my own son’s god-neglected death, not to turn aside.”

“That’s what we all are, you know. Hybrids, of both matter and spirit. The gods’ agents in the world of matter, to which they have no other entrée. Doorways.

“Rest will bring no cure for what he has,” said Ista. “I fear his riding about in this weather may worsen his sickness.”

Most especially, do not yield to the temptation to use it directly to induce her favor.”

But no god awaits him, Ista thought. That’s what sundered means.

Ista’s breath drew in. Her inner vision revealed a soul the like of which Ista had never seen before.

His soul . . . was lost in an intense violet haze that extended to the margins of his body. They have a sorcerer.

My sensitivity was but a confused wash of feelings, chills, intuitions, and dreams.”

have these odd little sputtering flashes flaring off your body—all sharp edges, I can see why the demons cringe . . .”

“Fools!” she gasped out. “We told you to flee, and now it is too late! She is come upon you. We shall all be taken back, weeping in vain!”

She let us eat him all up, as he was only to be executed for following the ways of the Bastard anyway.

It was a vast mistake, for the Lion of Roknar was beloved of the Father Himself, and possessed many god-gifts, among them the inner sight.

yet another gift was granted to him. The Father gave it to him to encapsulate the demon, to put it to sleep within the little girl.

It underestimated the iron strength of her will, tempered through four decades of swallowed rage. It became even more her slave.”

Dy Cabon raised a shaking hand. “Free demons cannot slay directly—”

Joen wishes to play with her new toys. Porifors is her very first chance to test her array of sorcerers in open war.

Cattilara snarled, “Why should I give him up to death—or to the gods, or to you, or to anyone? He’s mine. All my life is his.”

It seemed to her that some great black glacier, some ice dam in her soul, was melting, as if a hundred summers’ heat had fallen on it in an hour. Cracking, coming apart.

Arhys was sundered from his own gate, and lost the way back to it forever.