The Curse of Chalion Read Online Free PDF Page A

amber-haired girl came instantly to attention. “Please excuse Betriz, Ser dy Ferrej. The fault was mine. Where I led, she had no choice but to follow.”
    His brow twitched, and he gave her a little bow. “Then you might meditate, Royesse, on what honor a captain can claim, who drags his followers into an error when he knows he will himself escape the punishment.”
    The amber-haired girl’s wide lips twisted at this. After a long glance up under her lashes, she, too, dropped him a fraction of a curtsey, before both girls escaped further chastisement by dodging indoors. The man in black heaved a sigh. The waiting woman, laboring after them, cast him a nod of thanks.
    Even without these cues, Cazaril could have identified the man as the castle warder by the clink of keys at his silver-studded belt, and the chain of office around his neck. He rose at once as the man approached him, and essayed a cursedly awkward bow, pulled short by his adhesions. “Ser dy Ferrej? My name is Lupe dy Cazaril. I beg an audience of the Dowager Provincara, if…if it is her pleasure.” His voice faltered under the warder’s frown.
    “I do not know you, sir,” said the warder.
    “By the gods’ grace, the Provincara may remember me. I was once a page, here”—he gestured around rather blindly—“in this household. When the old provincar was alive.” The closest thing to a home he had left, he supposed. Cazaril was unutterably weary of being a stranger everywhere.
    The gray brows rose. “I will inquire if the Provincara will see you.”
    “That’s all I ask.” All he dared ask. He sank back to his bench, and wound his fingers together, as the warder stumped back into the main keep.
    After several miserable minutes of suspense, stared at sidelong by passing servants, Cazaril looked up at the warder’s return. Dy Ferrej eyed him with bemusement.
    “Her Grace the Provincara grants you an interview. Follow me.”
    His body had stiffened, sitting in the gathering chill; Cazaril stumbled a little, and cursed his stumble, as he followed the warder indoors. He scarcely needed a guide. The plan of the place came back to him, tumbling through his memory with every turning. Through this hall, across those blue-and-yellow-patterned tiles, up this stair and that one, through a whitewashed inner chamber, and then the room on the western wall she’d always favored for sitting in this time of day, with the best light for her seamstresses, or for reading. He had to duck his head a little through its low door, as he’d never had to before; it seemed the only change. But not a change in the door.
    “Here is the man as you bade, your grace,” the warder announced Cazaril neutrally, declining to either endorse or deny his claimed identity.
    The Dowager Provincara was seated in a wide wooden chair, made soft for her aging bones with cushions. She wore a sober dark green gown suitable to her high-ranked widowhood, but declined a widow’s cap, choosing instead to have her graying hair braided up around her head in two knots and twined with green ribbons, locked with jeweled clasps. She had a lady companion almost as old as herself seated by her side, a widow also, judging by the garb of a lay dedicat of the Temple that she wore. The companion clutched her needlework and regarded Cazaril with an untrusting frown.
    Praying his body would not betray him now with some twitch or stumble, Cazaril levered himself down onto one knee before her chair and bowed his head in respectful greeting. Her clothes were scented with lavender, and a dry old-woman smell. He looked up, searching her face for some sign of recognition. If she did not know him now, then no one he would become in truth, and swiftly.
    She gazed back, and bit her lip in wonder. “Five gods,” she murmured softly. “It really is you. My lord dy Cazaril. I bid you welcome to my house.” She held out her hand for him to kiss.
    He swallowed, almost gasping, and bent his head over it. Once, it