He let himself fall, boneless and unresisting, into his eager helpers' arms. He did manage to surreptitiously scoop up his pebble before the willing hands bore him off up the stairs to his bedchamber. They were excited and frightened, but he was growing delightfully relaxed. It seemed he was to be fussed over, lovely. When Betriz held his hand, as he was eased into his bed, he gripped hers and did not let go.

A tapping and low voices at his chamber door drew Cazaril from his doze. The room was dim. A single candle flame pushing back a deep dark told him night was fallen. He heard the physician, who had been sitting with him, murmuring, "He is sleeping, Roy—Royina..."

"No, I'm not," Cazaril called eagerly. "Come in." He tensed his arms to push himself upright, then thought better of it. He added, "Make more light. A deal more light. I want to see you."

A great party of persons shuffled into his chamber, attempting to make themselves quiet and gentle, like a parade gone suddenly shy. Iselle and Bergon, with Betriz and Palli attendant upon them; the archdivine of Taryoon, with the little judge of the Father staring around in his wake. They quite filled the room. Cazaril smiled up amiably at them from his horizontal paradise of clean linens and stillness as candle was held to candle and the flames multiplied.

Bergon looked down at him in apprehension and whispered hoarsely to the physician, "How is he?"

"He passed a deal of blood in his water earlier, but less tonight. He has no fever yet. I daren't let him have more than a few sips of tea, till we know how his gut wound progresses. I don't know how much pain he bears."

Cazaril decided he preferred to speak for himself. "I hurt, no doubt of that." He made another feeble attempt to roll up, and winced. "I would sit up a little. I cannot talk looking up all your noses like this." Palli and Bergon rushed to help gently raise him, plumping pillows behind him.

"Thank you," said Iselle to the physician, who bowed and, taking the royal hint, stepped out of the way.

Cazaril eased back with a sigh, and said, "What has transpired? Is Taryoon under attack? And don't talk in those funereal whispers, either."

Iselle smiled from the foot of his bed. "Much has happened," she told him, her voice reverting to its normal firm timbre. "Dy Jironal had men advancing as fast as they could march from both his son-in-law in Thistan and from Valenda, to follow up in support of his spies and abductors got in at the festival. Late last night the column coming down the road from Valenda met the delegation carrying our letter to Orico in Cardegoss, and captured them."

"Alive, yes?" said Cazaril in alarm.

"There was some scuffle, but none killed, thank the gods. Much debate followed in their camp."

Well, he had sent the most sensible, persuasive men of weight and worth that Taryoon could muster for that embassy.

"Later in the afternoon, we sent out parties of parley. We included some of dy Jironal's men who had witnessed the fight in the courtyard, and... and whatever that miraculous blue fire was that killed him, to explain and to testify. They cried and gibbered a lot, but they were very convincing. Cazaril, what really—oh, and they say Orico is dead."

Cazaril sighed. I knew that. "When?"

The archdivine of Taryoon replied, "There's some confusion about that. A Temple courier rode through to us this afternoon with the news. She bore me a letter from Archdivine Mendenal in Cardegoss saying it was the night after the royesse's—the royina's wedding. But dy Jironal's men all say he told them Orico had died the night before it, and so he was now rightful regent of Chalion. I suppose he was lying. I'm not sure it matters, now."

But it might have mattered, had events taken a different path... Cazaril frowned in curious speculation.

"In any case," put in Bergon, "between the news of dy Jironal's startling taking-off, and the failure and capture of their infiltrators, and the realization that they marched not against a rebellious Heiress, but their rightful royina, the columns have broken up. The men are returning to their homes. I'm just back from overseeing that." Indeed, he was mud-splashed, bright-eyed with the exuberance of success—and relief.

"Do you think the truce will hold?" asked Cazaril. "Dy Jironal held the strings of a very considerable network of power and relations, all of whom still have their interests at risk."

Palli grunted, and shook his head. "They have not the backing of forces from the Order of the Son, now it's headless—worse, they've the near certainty that control of the order will pass out of their faction now. I think the Jironal clan will learn caution."

"The provincar of Thistan has already sent us a letter of submission," put in Iselle, "just arrived. It looks to have been hastily penned. We plan to wait one more day to be sure the roads are clear, and to give thanks to the gods in the temple of Taryoon. Then Bergon and I will ride for Cardegoss with a contingent of my uncle's cavalry, for Orico's funeral and my coronation." Her mouth turned down. "I fear we will have to leave you here for a time, Lord Caz."

He glanced at Betriz, watching him, her eyes dark with concern. Where Iselle rode, Betriz, her first courtier, must needs follow.

Iselle went on, "Don't speak if it pains you too much, but Cazaril... what happened in the courtyard? Did the Daughter truly strike dy Jironal dead with a bolt of lightning?"

"His body looked it, I must say," said Bergon. "All cooked. I've never seen anything like it."

"That is a good story," said Cazaril slowly, "and will do for most men. You here should know the truth, but... I think this truth should go no further, eh?"

Iselle quietly bade the physician excuse himself. She glanced curiously at the little judge. "And this gentleman, Cazaril?"

"The Honorable Paginine is... is in the way of being a colleague of mine. He should stay, and the archdivine as well."

Cazaril found his audience ranged around his bed, staring at him rather breathlessly. Neither Paginine nor the archdivine, nor Palli, knew the preamble about Dondo and the death demon, Cazaril realized, and so he found himself compelled to revert to that beginning, though in as few words as he could make come out sensibly. At least he hoped it sounded coherent, and not like the ravings of a madman.

"Archdivine Mendenal in Cardegoss knows all this tale," he assured the shocked-looking pair from Taryoon. Palli's mouth was twisted in something between astonishment and indignation; Cazaril evaded his eye a trifle guiltily. "But when dy Jironal bade his men hold me unarmed, and ran me through—when he murdered me, the death demon bore us all off in an unbalanced confusion of killers and victims. That is, the demon bore the pair of them, but somehow my soul was attached, and followed... what I saw then... the goddess..." his voice faltered. "I don't know how to open my mouth and push out the universe in words. It won't fit. If I had all the words in all the languages in the world that ever were or will be, and spoke till the end of time, it still couldn't..." He was shivering, suddenly, his eyes blurred with tears.

"But you weren't really dead, were you?" said Palli uneasily.

"Oh, yes. Just for a little while... for an odd angle of little that came out, um, very large. If I had not died in truth, I could not have ripped open the wall between the worlds, and the goddess could not have reached in to take back the curse. Which was a drop of the Father's blood, as nearly as I could tell, though how the Golden General came by such a gift I know not. That's a metaphor, by the way. I'm sorry. I have not... I have not the words for what I saw. Talking about it is like trying to weave a box of shadows in which to carry water." And our souls are parched. "The Lady of Spring let me look through Her eyes, and though my second sight is taken back—I think—my eyes do not seem to work quite the same as they did..."

The archdivine signed himself. Paginine cleared his throat, and said diffidently, "Indeed, my lord, you do not make that great roaring light about you anymore."

"Do I not? Oh, good." Cazaril added eagerly, "But the black cloak about Iselle and Bergon, it is gone as well, yes?"

"Yes, my lord. Royse, Royina, if it please you. The shadow seems to be lifted altogether."

"So all is well. Gods, demons, ghosts, the whole company, all gone. There's nothing odd left about me now," said Cazaril happily.

Paginine screwed up his face in an expression that was not quite appalled, not quite a laugh. "I would not go so far as to say that, my lord," he murmured.

The archdivine nudged Paginine, and whispered, "But he speaks the truth, yes? Wild as it seems..."

"Oh, yes, Your Reverence. I have no doubt of that." The bland stare he traded Cazaril bore rather more understanding than that of the archdivine's, who was looking astonished and overawed.

"Tomorrow," Iselle announced, "Bergon and I shall make a thanksgiving procession to the temple, walking barefoot to sign our gratitude to the gods."

Cazaril said in muzzy worry, "Oh. Oh, do be careful, then. Don't step on any broken glass or old nails, now."

"We shall watch out for each other's steps the whole way," Bergon promised him.

Cazaril added aside to Betriz, his hand creeping across the coverlet to touch hers, "You know, I am not haunted anymore. Quite a load off my mind, in more ways than one. Very liberating to a man, that sort of thing..." His voice was dropping in volume, raspy with fatigue. Her hand turned under his, and gave a secret squeeze.

"We should withdraw and let you rest," said Iselle, frowning in renewed worry. "Is there anything you desire, Cazaril? Anything at all?"

About to reply No, nothing, he said instead, "Oh. Yes. I want music."

"Music?"

"Perhaps some very quiet music," Betriz ventured. "To lull him to sleep."

Bergon smiled. "If it please you, then, see to it, Lady Betriz." The mob withdrew, tiptoeing loudly. The physician returned. He let Cazaril drink tea, in trade for making more blood-tinted piss for him to examine suspiciously by candlelight and growl at in an unsettling fashion.

At length, Betriz came back with a nervous-looking young lutenist who appeared to have been wakened out of a sound sleep for this command performance. But he worked his fingers, tuned up, and played seven short pieces. None of them was the right one; none evoked the Lady and Her soul-flowers, till he played an eighth, an interlaced counterpoint of surpassing sweetness. That one had a faint echo of heaven in it. Cazaril had him play it through twice more, and cried a little, upon which Betriz insisted that he was too tired and must sleep now, and bore the young man off again.

And Cazaril still hadn't had a chance to tell her about her nose. When he tried to explain this miracle to the physician, the man responded by giving him a large spoonful of syrup of poppies, after which they ceased to alarm each other for the rest of the night.

IN THREE DAYS' TIME HIS WOUNDS STOPPED LEAKING scented fluid, closing cleanly, and the physician permitted Cazaril thin gruel for breakfast. This revived him enough to insist on being allowed out to sit in the spring sun of the courtyard. The expedition seemed to require an inordinate number of servants and helpers, but at last he was guided carefully down the stairs and into a chair lined with wool-padded and feather-stuffed cushions, with his feet propped up on another cushioned chair. He shooed away his helpers and gave himself over to a most delicious idleness. The fountain burbled soothingly. The trees in the tubs unfurled more fragrant flowers. A pair of little orange-and-black birds stitched the air, bringing dry grass and twigs to build a nest tucked up in the carvings on one of the gallery's supporting posts. An ambitious litter of paper and pens lay forgotten on the small table at Cazaril's elbow as he watched them flit back and forth.

Dy Baocia's palace was very quiet, with its royal guests and its lord and lady all gone to Cardegoss. Cazaril therefore smiled with lazy delight when the wrought-iron gate under the end archway swung aside to admit Palli. The march had been assigned by his new royina the dull task of keeping watch over her convalescent secretary while everyone else went off to the grand events in the capital, which seemed to Cazaril rather an unfair reward for Palli's valiant service. Palli had attended upon him so faithfully, Cazaril felt quite guilty for wishing Iselle might have spared Lady Betriz instead.

Palli, grinning, gave him a mock salute and seated himself on the fountain's edge. "Well, Castillar! You look better. Very vertical indeed. But what's this"—he gestured to the table—"work? Before they left yesterday your ladies charged me to enforce a very long list of things you were not to do, most of which you will be glad to know I have forgotten, but I'm sure work was high on it."

"No such thing," said Cazaril. "I was going to attempt some poetry after the manner of Behar, but then there were these birds... there goes one now." He paused to mark the orange-and-black flash. "People compliment birds for being great builders, but really, these two seem terribly clumsy. Perhaps they are young birds, and this is their first try. Persistent, though. Although I suppose if I was to attempt to build a hut using only my mouth, I would do no better. I should write a poem in praise of birds. If matter that gets up and walks about, like you, is miraculous, how much more marvelous is matter that gets up and flies!"

Palli's mouth quirked in bemusement. "Is this poetry or fever, Caz?"

"Oh, it is a great infection of poetry, a contagion of hymns. The gods delight in poets, you know. Songs and poetry, being of the same stuff as souls, can cross into their world almost unimpeded. Stone carvers, now... even the gods are in awe of stone carvers." He squinted in the sun and grinned back at Palli.

"Nevertheless," murmured Palli dryly, "one feels that your quatrain yesterday morning to Lady Betriz's nose was a tactical mistake."

"I was not making fun of her!" Cazaril protested indignantly. "Was she still angry at me when she left?"

"No, no, she wasn't angry! She was persuaded it was fever, and was very worried withal. If I were you, I'd claim it for fever."

"I could not write a poem to all of her just yet. I tried. Too overwhelming."