Ista turned toward him; her eyes widened, and her face stiffened. She surely knew something was terribly wrong just by his sudden presence here. The hundred ways to break the news to her gently that he'd rehearsed during the long hours of riding seemed to fall through his fingers, under the pressure of those dark, dilated eyes. Any delay now would be cruel beyond measure. He fell to one knee before her, and cleared his throat.

"First. Iselle is well. Hold to that." He inhaled. "Second. Teidez died two nights ago, from an infected wound."

The two women attending upon Ista cried out, and clutched each other. Ista barely moved, but for a little flinch, as if an invisible arrow had struck her. She vented a long, wordless exhalation.

"You understand my words, Royina?" Cazaril said hesitantly.

"Oh, yes," she breathed. One corner of her mouth turned up; Cazaril could not call it a smile. It was nothing like a smile, that black irony. "When it is too-long-anticipated, a blow falls as a relief, you see. The waiting is over. I can stop fearing, now. Can you understand that?"

Cazaril nodded.

After a moment of silence, broken only by the sobbing of one of her women, she added quietly, "How came he by this wound? Hunting? Or something... else?"

"Not... hunting exactly. In a way it was..." Cazaril licked his lips, chapped with the cold. "Lady, do you see anything odd about me?"

"I see only with my eyes, now. I've been blind for years, you see. You see?"

Her emphasis made her meaning very plain, Cazaril thought. "Yes."

She nodded and sat back. "I thought so. There is a look about one who sees with those eyes."

A trembling attendant crept up to Ista, and said in an overly light voice, "Lady, perhaps you should come away to bed, now. Your lady mother will surely be back soon..." She shot Cazaril a meaningful look over her shoulder; clearly, the woman thought Ista was going into one of her mad fugues. Into what everyone thought was one of her fugues. Had Ista ever been mad?

Cazaril sat back on his heels. "Please leave us now. I must have some private speech with the royina on matters of some urgency."

"Sir, my lord..." The woman managed a false smile, and whispered in his ear, "We dare not leave her in this stricken hour—she might do herself some harm."

Cazaril climbed to his full height, and took both ladies by the arms, and steered them gently but inexorably out the door. "I will undertake to guard her. Here, you may wait in this chamber across the hall, and if I need you, I will call out, all right?" He shut both doors upon their protests.

Ista waited unmoving, but for her hands. She held a fine lace handkerchief, which she commenced to folding, over and over, into smaller and smaller squares. Cazaril grunted down to sit cross-legged on the floor at her feet and stare up into that wide-eyed, chalky face.

"I have seen the Zangre's ghosts," he said.

"Yes."

"More. I have seen the dark cloud that hangs over your House. The Golden General's curse, the bane of Fonsa's heirs."

"Yes."

"You know of it, then?"

"Oh, yes."

"It hangs about you now."

"Yes."

"It hung about Orico, and Sara. Iselle—and Teidez."

"Yes." She tilted her head and stared away.

Cazaril thought about a state of shock he had seen sometimes come upon men in battle, between the moment a blow fell, and the time their bodies fell; men who should have been unconscious, should have been dead, staggering about yet for a time, accomplishing, sometimes, extraordinary acts. Was this quiet coherence such a shock, soon to melt—should he seize it? Or had Ista ever really been incoherent? Or did we just not understand her?

"Orico has become very ill. How I came by my second sight is all of a piece with this black tangle. But please, please, lady, tell me how you came to know. What did you see, and when, and how? I must understand. Because I think—I fear—it has been given to me, it has fallen to me, to act. Yet nothing has told me what that action must be. Even second sight cannot pierce this dark."

Her brows went up. "I can tell you truths. I cannot give you understanding. For how can one give what one does not possess? I have always told the truth."

"Yes. I see that now." He took a daring breath. "But have you ever told all of it?"

She sucked on her lower lip a moment, studying him. Her trembling hands, seeming to belong to some other Ista than the one of this carven face, began unfolding the tight knot of the handkerchief again upon her knee. Slowly, she nodded. Her voice was so low, Cazaril had to tilt his head to be sure of catching all her words.

"It began when I became pregnant with Iselle. The visions. The second sight came and went. I thought it was an effect of my pregnancy—bearing turns some women's brains. The physicians convinced me of that, for a time. I saw the blind ghosts drifting. I saw the dark cloud hanging upon Ias, and young Orico. I heard voices. I dreamed of the gods, of the Golden General, of Fonsa and his two faithful companions burning in his tower. Of Chalion burning like the tower.

"After Iselle was born, the visions ceased. I thought I had been mad, and then got well again."

The eye could not see itself, not even the inner eye. He had been granted Umegat, been granted knowledge bought at others' cost and handed to him as a gift. How frightened would he be by now, if he were still groping for explanations of the inexplicable?

"Then I became pregnant again, with Teidez. And the visions began again, twice as bad as before. It was unbearable to think myself mad. Only when I threatened to kill myself did Ias confess to me that it was the curse, and that he knew it. Had always known of it."

And how betrayed, to find that those who'd known the truth hadn't told him, had left him to stagger about in isolated terror?

"I was horrified that I had brought my two children into this dire danger. I prayed and prayed to the gods that it might be lifted, or that they would tell me how it might be lifted, that they would spare the innocent.

"Then the Mother of Summer came to me, when I was round to bursting with Teidez. Not in a dream, not while I was sleeping, but when I was awake and sober, in the broad day. She stood as close to me as you are now, and I fell to my knees. I could have touched her robe, if I'd dared. Her breath was a perfume, like wildflowers in the summer grasses. Her face was too beautiful for my eyes to comprehend, it was like staring into the sun. Her voice was music."

Ista's lips softened; even now, the peace of that vision echoed briefly in her face, a flash of beauty like the reflection of sunlight on dark waters. But her brows tightened again, and she spoke on, bending forward, growing, if possible, more shadowed, more intent.

"She said that the gods sought to take the curse back, that it did not belong in this world, that it was a gift to the Golden General that he had spilt improperly. She said that the gods might draw the curse back to them only through the will of a man who would lay down his life three times for the House of Chalion."

Cazaril hesitated. The sound of his own breath in his nostrils seemed enough to drown out that quiet voice. But the question rose helplessly to his lips, though he cursed himself for sounding a fool. "Um... I don't suppose that three men could lay down their lives once each, instead?"

"No." Her lips curved in that weird ironic not-smile. "You see the problem."

"I... I... I don't see the solution, though. Was it a trick, this... prophecy?"

Her hands opened briefly, ambiguously, then began folding the handkerchief again. "I told Ias. He told Lord dy Lutez, of course; Ias kept nothing from dy Lutez, except for me. Except for me."

Historical curiosity overcame Cazaril. Now that they were comrades in... sainthood, or something like it, it seemed easy to talk to Ista. The ease was lunatic, tilted, fragile, if he blinked it would be gone beyond recall, and yet... saint to saint and soul to soul, for this floating moment it was an intimacy stranger and more soaring than lover to lover. He began to understand why Umegat had fallen upon him with such hunger. "What was their relationship, really?"

She shrugged. "They were lovers since before I was born. Who was I to judge them? Dy Lutez loved Ias; I loved Ias. Ias loved us both. He tried so hard, cared so much, trying to bear the weight of all his dead brothers and his father Fonsa, too. He'd worn himself near to death with the caring, and yet it all went wrong, and wrong again."

She hesitated for a time, and Cazaril was terrified for an instant that he had inadvertently done something to bring this flow of confidences to an end. But apparently she was marshaling... not her thoughts, but her heart: for she went on, even more slowly. "I don't remember now whose idea it first was. We sat in a night council, the three of us, after Teidez was born. I still had the sight. We knew both of our children were drawn into this dark thing, and poor Orico, too. ‘Save my children,' Ias cried, laying his forehead down upon the table, weeping. ‘Save my children.' And Lord dy Lutez said, ‘For the love I bear you, I will try; I will dare this sacrifice.' "

He scarcely dared whisper it. "But five gods, how?"

Her head jerked. "We discussed a hundred schemes; how might one kill a man, and yet bring him back to die again? Impossible, and yet not quite. We finally settled on drowning as the best to try. It would occasion the least physical injury, and there were many stories of people who'd been brought back from drowning. Dy Lutez rode out to investigate some of them, to try to determine the trick of it."

Cazaril's breath huffed out. Drowning, oh, gods. And in the coldest of cold blood... his hands were shaking, too, now. Her voice went on, quiet and relentless.

"We swore a physician to secrecy, and descended to the dungeons of the Zangre. Dy Lutez let himself be stripped and bound, arms and legs tight to his body, and hung upside down over the tank. We lowered him down headfirst. And raised him again, when he stopped struggling at last..."

"And he'd died?" said Cazaril softly. "Then the treason charge was..."

"Died indeed, but not for the last time. We revived him, just barely."

"Oh."

"Oh, it was working, though!" Her hands clenched. "I could feel it, I could see it, the crack in the curse! But dy Lutez—his nerve broke. The next night, he would not undertake the second immersion. He cried I was trying to assassinate him, for jealousy's sake. Then Ias and I... made a mistake."

Cazaril could see where this was going, now. Closing his eyes would not spare him from seeing. He forced them to stay open, and on her face.

"We seized him, and made the second trial by force. He screamed and wept... Ias wavered, I cried, ‘But we have to! Think of the children!' But this time when we drew him out, he was drowned dead, and not all our tears and prayers revived him then.

"Ias was shattered. I was distraught. My inner vision was stripped from my eyes. The gods turned their faces from me..."

"Then the treason charge was false." Profoundly false.

"Yes. A lie, to hide our sins. To explain the body." Her breath drew in. "But his family was allowed to inherit his estate—nothing was attaindered."

"Except his reputation. His public honor." An honor that had been all in all to proud dy Lutez; who had valued all his wealth and glory but as outward signs of it.

"It was done in the panic of the moment, and then we could not draw back from it. Of all our regrets, I think that one gnawed Ias the most, in the months after.

"Ias would not try again, would not try to find another volunteer. It had to be a willing sacrifice, you see; no struggling murder would have done it, but only a man stepping forth of his own volition, with eyes wide-open. Ias turned his face to the wall and died of grief and guilt"—her hands stretched the scrap of lace almost to tearing—"leaving me alone with two little children and no way to protect or save them from this... black... thing ..." She drew breath, her chest heaving. But she did not spiral into hysteria, as Cazaril, tensing to spring up and call for her attendants, feared. As her breathing slowed, he let his muscles slacken again. "But you," she said at last. "The gods have touched you?"

"Yes."

"I am sorry."

An unsteady laugh left his lips. "Aye." He rubbed the back of his neck. It was his turn for confession, now. He might shade the truth with others, for expediency's sake. Not with Ista. He owed her weight for weight and value for value. Wound for wound. "How much news had you from Cardegoss of Iselle's brief betrothal, and Lord Dondo dy Jironal's fate?"

"One messenger followed atop another before we could celebrate—we could not tell what to make of it."

"Celebrate? A forty-year-old matched to a sixteen-year-old?"

Her chin came up, for a moment so like Iselle that Cazaril caught his breath. "Ias and I were further apart in age than that."

Ah. Yes. That would tend to give her a different view of such things. "Dondo was no Ias, my lady. He was corrupt—debauched—impious, an embezzler—and I am almost certain he had Ser dy Sanda murdered. Maybe even by his own hand. He was colluding with his brother Martou to gain complete control of the House of Chalion, through Orico, Teidez—and Iselle."

Ista's hand touched her throat. "I met Martou, years ago, at court. He already aspired then to be the next Lord dy Lutez. Dy Lutez, the brightest, noblest star ever to shine in the court of Chalion—Martou might have studied to clean his boots, barely. Dondo, I never met."

"Dondo was a disaster. I first encountered him years ago, and he had no character then. He grew worse with age. Iselle was distraught, and furious to have him forced upon her. She prayed to the gods to release her from this abominable match, but the gods... didn't answer. So I did.

"I stalked him for a day, intending to assassinate him for her, but I couldn't get near him. So I prayed to the Bastard for a miracle of death magic. And I was granted it."

After a moment, Ista's eyebrows went up. "Why aren't you dead?"

"I thought I was dying. When I awoke to find Dondo dead without me, I didn't know what to think. But Umegat determined Iselle's prayers had brought down a second miracle, and the Lady of Spring had spared my life from the Bastard's demon, but only temporarily. Saint Umegat—I thought he was a groom—" His story was growing hopelessly tangled. He took a deep breath, and backed up and explained about Umegat and the miracle of the menagerie, and how it had preserved poor Orico in the teeth of the curse.