She waved out her companions. "Go, I will call you back." Dy Ferrej was breaking open his letter by the time he reached the door.

She sat with a rustle of fabric, still clutching the paper, and gestured Cazaril to another chair, which he pulled up to her knee. "I must see to Ista before she sleeps."

"I'll try to be succinct, Your Grace. This is what I have learned this season in Cardegoss. What I went through to learn it..." That cost, the cracking open of his world, Ista had understood at once; he was not sure the Provincara would grasp it. "Doesn't matter now. But Archdivine Mendenal in Cardegoss can confirm the truth of it all, if you get a chance at him. Tell him I sent you, and he will deny you nothing."

Her brows went up. "How is it you bend an archdivine?"

Cazaril snorted softly. "I pull rank."

She sat up, her lips thinning. "Cazaril, don't make stupid jokes with me. You grow as cryptic as Ista."

Yes, Ista's self-protective sense of—not humor, irony—likely was irritating, at close quarters. Ista. Who spoke for Ista? "Provincara... your daughter is heartbroken, ravaged in will. She longs for the release of death. But she is not mad. The gods are not so merciful."

The old woman hunched, as though his words grated over a raw spot. "Her grief is extravagant. Was no woman ever widowed before? Has none lost a child? I've suffered both, but I did not moan and mope and carry on so, not for years. I cried my hour, yes, but then I continued about my duties. If she is not broken in reason, then she is vastly self-indulgent."

Could he make her understand Ista's differences without violating Ista's tacit confidences? Well, even a partial truth might help. He bent his head to hers. "It all goes back to the great war of Fonsa the Fairly-Wise with the Golden General..." In the plainest possible terms, he detailed the inner workings of the curse upon the history of the House of Chalion. There were enough other disasters in Ias's reign that he scarcely needed to touch on the fall of dy Lutez. Orico's impotence, the slow corruption of his advisors, the failure of both his policies and his health brought the tale to the present.

The Provincara scowled. "Is all this vile luck a work of Roknari black magic, then?"

"Not... as I understand it. It is a spillage, a perversion of some ineffable divinity, lost from its proper place."

She shrugged. "Close enough. If it acts like black magic, then black magic it is. The practical question is, how to counter it?"

Cazaril wasn't sure about that close enough. Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action. Ista and Ias had tried to force a solution, as though the curse were magic, to be countered by magic. A rite done by rote.

She added, "And does this link to this wild tale we heard of Dondo dy Jironal being murdered by death magic?"

That, at least, he could answer, none better. He had already decided to strip out as much of the unnatural detail as possible from her version of events. He did not think her confidence in him would be augmented by his babbling of demons, ghosts, saints, second sight, and even more grotesque things. More than enough remained to astound her. He began with the tale of Iselle's disastrous betrothal, although he did not attribute the source of Dondo's death miracle, concealing his act of murder as he'd concealed Ista's.

The Provincara was not so squeamish. "If Lord Dondo was as bad as you say," she sniffed, "I shall say prayers for that unknown benefactor!"

"Indeed, Your Grace. I pray for him daily."

"And Dondo a mere younger son—for Iselle! What was that fool Orico thinking?"

Abandoning the ineffable, he presented the menagerie to her as a marvel devised by the Temple to preserve Orico's failing health, true enough as far as it went. She grasped instantly the secret political purpose of Dondo's setting Teidez to its—and Orico's—destruction, and ground her teeth. She moaned for Teidez's betrayal. But the news that Valenda must now prepare for a funeral, a wedding, and a war, possibly simultaneously, revitalized her.

"Can Iselle count on her uncle dy Baocia's support?" Cazaril asked her. "How many others can he and you bring in against dy Jironal's faction?"

The Provincara made rapid inventory of the lords she might draw in to Valenda, ostensibly for Teidez's funeral, in fact to pry Iselle from dy Jironal's hands. The list impressed him. After all her decades of political observation in Chalion, the Provincara didn't even need to look at a map to plan her tactics.

"Have them ride in for Teidez's funeral with every man they can muster," said Cazaril. "Especially, we must control the roads between here and Ibra, to guarantee the safety of Royse Bergon."

"Difficult," said the Provincara, sitting back with her lips pursing. "Some of dy Jironal's own lands, and those of his brothers-in-law, lie between here and the border. You should have a troop to ride with you. I will strip Valenda to give you the men."

"No," said Cazaril slowly. "You'll need all your men when Iselle arrives, which may well be before I can return. And if I take a troop to Ibra, our speed will be limited. We cannot hope to obtain remounts on the road for so large a company, and maintaining secrecy would become impossible. Better we should travel outward light and fast and unmarked. Save the troop to meet us coming back. Oh, and beware, your Baocian captain you sent with Teidez sold himself to Dondo—he cannot be trusted. You'll have to find some way to replace him when he returns."

The Provincara swore. "Bastard's demons, I'll have his ears."

They made plans to pass his ciphered letters to Iselle, and hers to him, through Valenda, making it appear to dy Jironal's spies that Cazaril still was in her grandmother's company. The Provincara undertook to pawn some of Iselle's jewelry for him on the morrow, at the best rate, to raise the coin he'd need for the next part of his journey. They settled a dozen other practical details in as many minutes. Her very determination made her god-proof, Cazaril imagined; for all her attention to pious ceremony, no god was going to slip into that iron will even edgewise. The gods had given her less perilous gifts, and he was grateful enough for them.

"You understand," he said at last, "I think this marriage scheme may rescue Iselle. I don't know that it will also save Ista." Neither Ista, drifting sadly about the castle of Valenda, nor Orico, lying blind and bloated in the Zangre. And no exhortation of the Provincara to Ista to bestir herself would be of any use, while this black thing still choked her like a poisoned fog.

"If it only rescues Iselle from the clutches of Chancellor dy Jironal, it will satisfy me. I can't believe Orico made such vile provisions in his will." That legal note had exercised her almost more than the supernatural matters. "Taking my granddaughter from me without even consulting me!"

Cazaril fingered his beard. "You realize, if all this succeeds, your granddaughter will become your liege lord. Royina in her own right of all Chalion, and royina-consort of Ibra."

Her lips screwed up. "That's the maddest part of all. She's just a girl! Not but that she always had more wits than poor Teidez. What can all the gods of Chalion be thinking, to place such a child on the throne at Cardegoss!"

Cazaril said mildly, "Perhaps that the restoration of Chalion is the work of a very long lifetime, and that no one so old as you or I could live to see it through."

She snorted. "You're barely more than a child yourself. Children in charge of the whole world these days, no wonder it's all gone mad. Well... well. We must bustle about tomorrow. Five gods, Cazaril, go sleep, though I doubt I shall. You look like death warmed over, and you haven't my years to excuse you."

Creakily, he clambered to his feet and bowed himself out. The Provincara's bursts of irate energy were fragile. It would take all her retainers' aid to prevent her from exhausting herself dangerously. He found the anxiously waiting Lady dy Hueltar in the next room, and sent her in to attend upon her lady cousin.