"Bujold, Lois McMaster - Chalion 2 - Paladin of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bujold Lois McMaster)
CHAPTER THREE
Ista spend the early morning sorting through her wardrobe with Liss, searching for clothing fit for the road and not merely a royina. Much that was old lingered in IstaТs cupboards and chests, but little that was plain. Any ornate or delicate gown that made Liss wrinkle her nose in doubt went instantly into the discard pile. Ista did manage to assemble a riding costume of leggings, split skirt, tunic, and vest-cloak that showed not a scrap of MotherТs green. Finally, they ruthlessly raided the wardrobes of IstaТs ladies and maids, to the lattersТ scandal. This resulted at the last in a neat pile of garmentsЧpractical, plain, washable, and, above all, few.
Liss was clearly happier to be sent off to the stables to select the most suitable riding horse and baggage mule. One baggage mule. By midday IstaТs feverish single-mindedness resulted in both women dressed for the road, the horses saddled, and the mule packed. The dy Gura brothers found them standing in the cobbled courtyard when they rode through the castle gate heading ten mounted men in the garb of the DaughterТs Order, dy Cabon following on his white mule.
The grooms held the royinaТs horse and ushered her to the mounting block. Liss leapt up lightly on her tall bay with no such assistance. In the spring of her life Ista had ridden much; hunted all day and danced till the moon went down, at the royaТs glittering court when sheТd first come there. She, too, had been too long abed in this castle of age and grievous memory. A little light duty to regain condition was just what was wanted.
Learned dy Cabon clambered from his mule long enough to stand up on the mounting block and intone a mercifully brief prayer and blessing upon the enterprise. Ista bowed her head, but did not mouth the responses. I want nothing of the gods IТve had their gifts before.
Fourteen people and eighteen animals just to get her on the road. What about those pilgrims who somehow managed this with no more than a staff and a sack?
Lady dy Hueltar and all of IstaТs ladies and maids trooped down to the courtyard, not to wish her farewell, it transpired, but to weep pointedly at her in one last, decidedly counterproductive, bid to make her change her mind. In the teeth of all evidence to the contrary, Lady dy Hueltar wailed, УOh, sheТs not seriousЧstop her, for the MotherТs sake, dy Ferrej!Ф Gritting her teeth, Ista let their cries bounce off her back like arrows glancing from chain mail. Dy CabonТs white mule led out the archway and down the road at a gentle amble, but even so the voices fell behind at last. The soft spring wind stirred IstaТs hair. She did not look back.
***
They reached the inn at Palma by sunset, barely. It had been a very long time, Ista reflected as she was helped down from her horse, since she had spent a whole day in the saddle, hunting or traveling. Liss, plainly bored with the pilgrimageТs placid pace, jumped down off her animal as though sheТd spent the afternoon lounging on a couch. Foix had apparently worked through whatever stiffness lingered from his injuries earlier in the brothersТ journey. Even dy Cabon didnТt waddle as though he hurt. When the divine offered her his arm, Ista took it gratefully.
Dy Cabon had sent one of the men riding ahead to bespeak beds and a meal for the party, fortunately as it turned out, for the inn was small. Another party, of tinkers, was being turned away as they arrived. The place had once been a narrow fortified farmhouse, now made more sprawling with an added wing. The dy Gura brothers and the divine were given one chamber to share, Ista and Liss another, and the rest of the guardsmen were assigned pallets in the stable loft, although the mild night made this no discomfort.
The innkeeper and his wife had set up two tables near the sacred spring, in a little grove behind the building, and hung lanterns lavishly in the trees. The thick moss and ferns, the bluebells and the bloodroots with their starry white blooms, the interlaced boughs, and the gentle gurgle of the water running over the smooth stones made a more lovely dining chamber, Ista thought, than she had sat in for many a year. They all washed their hands in springwater brought in a copper basin and blessed by the divine, and needing no other perfume. The innkeeperТs wife was famous for her larder-keeping. A pair of servants kept busy lugging out heavy trays and jugs good bread and cheese, roast ducks, mutton, sausages, dried fruit, new herbs and spring greens, eggs, dark olives and olive oil from the north, apple nut tarts, new ale and ciderЧsimple fare, but very wholesome. Dy Cabon made flattering inroads upon these offerings, and even IstaТs appetite, numbed for months, bestirred itself. When she finally undressed and lay down beside Liss in the clean little bed in the chamber under the eaves, she fell asleep so quickly she barely remembered it next morning.
***
Rising again, as the early light fell through the half-open casement window, proved briefly awkward. Through sheer ingrained habit, Ista stood still for a time and waited to be dressed, like a doll, till she realized her new maidservant would require instruction. At that point it became easier to sort out and draw on her garments herself, though she did ask for help with some of the fastenings. They snagged for a moment upon the problem of IstaТs hair.
УI donТt know how to dress ladiesТ hair,Ф Liss confessed when Ista handed her the brush and sat on a low bench. She stared doubtfully at IstaТs thick dun mane, hanging to her waist. Ista had, perhaps ill-advisedly, picked out her former attendantТs careful, tight, elaborate braiding before bed. The hairТs own curl had reasserted itself during the night, and it was now beginning to snarl, and perhaps growl and snap.
УYou do your own, presumably. What do you do with it?Ф
УWell, I put it in a braid.Ф
УWhat else?Ф
УI put it in two braids.Ф
Ista thought a moment. УDo you do the horses?Ф
УOh, yes, my lady. Snail braids, and dressed with ribbons, and fringe knots with beads for the MotherТs Day, and for the SonТs Day the fountain knots along the crest, with feathers worked in, andЧФ
УFor today, put it in one braid.Ф
The whole party met in the grove for dawn prayers, for this the first full day of IstaТs pilgrimage. Dawn by courtesy, anywayЧthe sun had been up for some hours before the innТs guests. The innkeeper, his wife, and all their children and the servants were also turned out for the ceremony, as the visit of a divine of notable scholarship was evidently a rare event. Besides which, Ista thought more cynically, there was the possibility that were he flatteringly enough received, the divine might recommend other pilgrims to this decidedly minor holy attraction.
As this wellspring was sacred to the Daughter, dy Cabon stood on the bank of the rivulet in the sun-dappled shade and commenced with a short springtime prayer from a small book of occasional devotions he carried in his saddlebag. Exactly why this well was sacred to the Lady of Spring was a little unclear. Ista found the innkeeperТs assertion that it was the true secret location of the miracle of the virgin and the water jar a trifle unconvincing, as she knew of at least three other sites in Chalion alone that claimed that legend. But the beauty of the place was surely excuse enough for its holy reputation.
Dy Cabon, his stained robes seeming almost white in this pure light, pocketed his book and cleared his throat for the morning lesson. Since the tables behind them stood set and waiting for breakfast to be served when prayers were done, Ista was confident that the sermon would be succinct.
УAs this is the beginning of a spiritual journey, I shall go back to the tale of beginnings we all learned in our childhoods.Ф The divine closed his eyes briefly, as if marshaling memory. УHere is the story as Ordol writes it in his Letters to the Young Royse dy Brajar.Ф
His eyes opened again, and his voice took up a storytellerТs rhythm. УThe world was first and the world was flame, fluid and fearsome. As the flame cooled, matter formed and gained vast strength and endurance, a great globe with fire at its heart. From the fire at the heart of the world slowly grew the World-Soul.
УBut the eye cannot see itself, not even the Eye of the World-Soul. So the World-Soul split in two, that it might so perceive itself; and so the Father and the Mother came into being. And with that sweet perception, for the first time, love became possible in the heart of the World-Soul. Love was the first of the fruits that the realm of the spirit gifted back to the realm of matter that was its fountain and foundation. But not the last, for song was next, then speech.Ф Dy Cabon, speaking, grinned briefly and drew another long breath.
УAnd the Father and the Mother between them began to order the world, that existence might not be instantly consumed again by fire and chaos and roiling destruction. In their first love for each other they bore the Daughter and the Son, and divided the seasons of the world among them, each with its special and particular beauty, each to its own lordship and stewardship. And in the harmony and security of this new composition, the matter of the world grew in boldness and complexity. And from its strivings to create beauty, plants and animals and men arose, for love had come into the fiery heart of the world, and matter sought to return gifts of spirit to the realm of spirit, as lovers exchange tokens.Ф
Satisfaction flickered across dy CabonТs suety features, and he swayed a trifle with his cadences as he became absorbed by his tale. Ista suspected they were getting to his favorite part.
УBut the fire at the heart of the world also held forces of destruction that could not be denied. And from this chaos rose the demons, who broke out and invaded the world and preyed upon the fragile new souls growing there as a mountain wolf preys upon the lambs of the valleys. It was the Season of Great Sorcerers. The order of the world was disrupted, and winter and spring and summer and fall upended one into another. Drought and flood, ice and fires threatened the lives of men, and of all the marvelous plants and artful creatures that matter, infected by love, had offered on the altar of the World-Soul.
УThen one day a powerful demon lord, wise and wicked by the consumption of many souls of men, came upon a man living alone in a tiny hermitage in a wood. Like a cat who thinks to toy with her prey, he accepted the beggarТs hospitality and waited his chance to leap from the worn-out body he presently possessed to the fresh new one. For the man, though clad in rags, was beautiful: his glance was like a sword thrust and his breath, perfume.
УBut the demon lord was confounded when he accepted a little earthen bowl of wine, and drank it in one gulp, and prepared to pounce; for the saint had divided his own soul, and poured it out into the wine, and given it to the demon of his own free will. And so for the first time, a demon gained a soul, and all the beautiful and bitter gifts of a soul.
УThe demon lord fell to the floor of the woodland cell and howled with all the astonished woe of a child being born, for he was born in that moment, into the world of both matter and spirit. And taking the hermitТs body that was his free gift, and not stolen nor begrudged, he fled through the woods in terror back to his terrible sorcererТs palace, and hid.
УFor many months he cowered there, trapped in the horror of his self, but slowly the great-souled saint began to teach him the beauties of virtue. The saint was a devotee of the Mother, and called down Her grace to heal the demon of his sin, for with the gift of free will had come the possibility of sin, and the burning shame of it, which tormented the demon as nothing had ever done before. And between the lash of his sin and the lessons of the saint, the demonТs soul began to grow in probity and power. As a great sorcerer-paladin, with the MotherТs favor fluttering upon his mailed sleeve, he began to move in the world of matter, and fight the baleful soulless demons on the godsТ behalf in the places where They could not reach.
УThe great-souled demon became the MotherТs champion and captain, and She loved him without limit for his soulТs incandescent splendor. And so began the great battle to clear the world of demons run rampant and restore the order of the seasons.
УThe other demons feared him, and attempted to combine against him, but could not, for such cooperation was beyond their nature; still their onslaught was terrible, and the great-souled demon, beloved of the Mother, was slain on the final battlefield.
УAnd so was born the last god, the Bastard, love child of the goddess and the great-souled demon. Some say He was born on the eve of the last battle, fruit of a union upon Her great couch, some say the grieving Mother gathered up the great-souled demonТs shattered dear remains from the stricken field and mixed them with Her blood, and so made the Bastard by Her great art. However so, their Son, of all the gods, was given agency over both spirit and matter, for He inherited as servants the demons that His fatherТs great sacrifice had conquered and enslaved and so swept out of the world.
УWhat is certainly a lie,Ф dy Cabon continued in a suddenly more prosaic, not to mention irate, tone of voice, Уis the Quadrene heresy that the great-souled demon took the Mother by force and so engendered the Bastard upon Her against Her great will. A scurrilous and senseless and blasphemous lie . . .Ф Ista wasnТt sure if he was still paraphrasing Ordol, or if that was his own gloss. He cleared his throat and finished more formally, УHere ends the tale and tally of the advent of the five gods.Ф
Ista had heard various versions of the tally of the gods what seemed several hundred times since childhood, but she had to admit, dy CabonТs delivery of the old story had the eloquence and sincerity to make it seem almost new again. Granted, most versions did not give the complex story of the Bastard more space than the rest of the Holy Family put together, but people had to be allowed their favorites. Despite herself, she was moved.
Dy Cabon returned to ritual and called down the fivefold benison, asking of each god the proper gifts, leading the respondents in praise in return. Of the Daughter, growth and learning and love; of the Mother, children, health, and healing; of the Son, good comradeship, hunting, and harvest; of the Father, children, justice, and an easy death in its due time.
УAnd the Bastard grant us . . .ФЧdy CabonТs voice, fallen into the soothing singsong of ceremony, stumbled for the first time, slowingЧУin our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountainТs peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding.Ф He blinked, looking startled.
IstaТs chin snapped up; for an instant, her spine seemed to freeze. No. No. There is nothing here, nothing here, nothing here. Nothing, do you hear me? She forced her breath out slowly.
It was not the usual wording. Most prayers asked to be spared the fifth godТs attention, the master of all disasters out of season as He was. The divine hastily signed himself, touching forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, hand spread wide upon his chest above his broad paunch, and signed again in the air to call down blessing upon all assembled there. The company, released, stirred and stretched, some breaking into low-voiced talk, some strolling away to their dayТs tasks. Dy Cabon came toward Ista, rubbing his hands and smiling anxiously.
УThank you, Learned,Ф Ista said, Уfor that good beginning.Ф
He bowed in relief at her approval. УMy very great pleasure, my lady.Ф He brightened still further as the innТs servants hurried to bring out what promised to be a very hearty breakfast. Ista, a little shamed by the excellence of his effort to have purloined the divine with false pretenses of a sham pilgrimage, was heartened by the reflection that dy Cabon was clearly enjoying his work.
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