Work Text:
The Extraordinary Case of the Golden General
Speculation by Scott Washburn
In Lois McMaster Bujold’s wonderful novel “The Curse of Chalion” the central issue of the story is the curse mentioned in the title. It has afflicted the ruling family of the Royacy (kingdom) of Chalion for three generations and it falls to Cazaril, the story’s main character, to find a way to lift the curse.
But what is the curse? Umegat, a Saint of the Bastard, tells Cazaril that the curse came from the Roknari leader, The Golden General. This man had been given some blessing by the Father, some power which allowed him to raise a great army to attack Chalion. When Fonsa, the Roya of Chalion uses Death Magic to kill the Golden General the Father’s blessing spills out as a curse upon Fonsa’s heirs. “’The Golden General was a tidal wave of destiny,’” said Umegat. “’gathering to crash upon the world. Fonsa’s soul could match his soul, but could not balance his vast fate. When the death demon carried their souls from the world, that fate overflowed to settle on Fonsa’s heirs, a miasma of ill luck and subtle bitterness.’” He suggests the curse might cease if all the heirs of Fonsa’s house died. “’Or, perhaps, even then, it will continue to trickle down through time like a stream of poison.’”
So, the curse is some gift of the Father, twisted, perhaps by the dying rage of the Golden General, into a curse to afflict his enemies forever after. But what is it? Umegat said: “’The curse takes a hundred forms, twisting each good thing that should be Orico’s [the current roya] according to the weakness of its nature. A wife grown barren instead of fertile. A chief advisor corrupt instead of loyal. Friends fickle instead of true, food that sickens instead of strengthening, and on and on.’” When Iselle states that if the planned marriage to Bergon doesn’t succeed she will raise her own banner against the conniving Chancellor dy Jironel, Cazaril fears that: “This was the form the curse of her house would take in the next generation: not personal sorrow, but civil war between royal and noble faction, tearing the country apart from end to end.” So the curse could affect not just individuals but a whole country.
When Cazaril’s first attempt to break the curse through Iselle’s marriage to Bergon fails, he thinks about other possible consequences. Noting how it had worked its evil on Teidez: “the boy’s special strengths and virtues, few as they had been, twisted to a dire ill.’ and: ‘Iselle and Bergon between them had many strengths and virtues. The scope for the curse’s distortions was immense.”
So, the curse is not simply some illness, like a genetic disease that troubles a certain family line. It can affect others, who are not Fonsa’s descendants, and the effects are tailored to each individual. How can this happen? Does the curse possess some sort of intelligence? Can it adjust what it does to meet each circumstance? Did the Father’s gift to the Golden General have those same characteristics but of good things to help the general (and perhaps his allies) and was this then corrupted to do evil?
Cazaril asks this very question, lying on a prayer rug in the Provincar of Valenda’s court in Taryoon – and gives us a hint: “What was the Golden General’s blessing-curse anyway, this exiled thing from the other side? What kind of portal had the Roknari genius opened for himself, what kind of channel had he been…?”
We know that ‘god-touched’ people, and saints especially, can open a hole between the world of matter and world of spirit (where the gods reside) and that only through those holes can the gods touch and affect the world of matter. And the greater the soul, the wider the hole and the larger the possible effect. The Golden General was extraordinary, even among the god-touched. As Umegat tells Cazaril: “I saw the General once, you know. I was a spy in his princedom at the time. I hated everything he stood for, and yet… had he given me a word, a mere word, I think I would have crawled after him on my knees. He was more than just god-touched. He was avatar incarnate, striding toward the fulcrum of the world in the perfect instant of time. Almost. He was reaching for his moment when Fonsa and the Bastard cut him down.”
So it would seem that the Father’s gift to the Golden General was some extraordinary Power of Command, the ‘Look of Eagles’ that one such as Napoleon possessed. Umegat’s description of his encounter is very similar to that of historian Hendrik van Loon when writing of Napoleon: “…I am telling you that the Emperor Napoleon was a most contemptible person. But should I happen to look out the window, down upon Seventh Avenue, and should the endless procession of trucks and carts come to a sudden halt, and should I hear the sound of the heavy drums and see the little man on his white horse, in his old and much-worn green uniform, then I don’t know, but I am afraid that I would leave my books and [my cat] and my home and everything else to follow him wherever he cared to lead. My own grandfather did this and Heaven knows he was not born to be a hero.”
The Father’s gift then, was something ‘from the other side’, the world of spirit, that had managed to come through the hole that the Golden General’s great soul had opened up. With it he could convince friends to do anything for him, turn neutrals and even enemies into devoted allies, and inspire his troops to feats of selfless valor. Little wonder that the Quintarian Royacies were “losing against him on every front.”
We’ve seen a few saints in the World of the Five Gods. Most of the time they have modest powers which come and go when the god wants to work through them. But it would appear that the Golden General and his gift was more than that. In fact, it seems as though the gift was some actual part of the Father which had come through the gate to reside more or less permanently with the Golden General. Cazaril called it an ‘exiled thing’, and when it was at last returned to the world of spirit: “Another Presence, solemn and gray, waited there, and took it up. And took it in. And sighed in something like relief, or completion, or balance.” Cazaril thinks: “’I think it was the blood of a god. Spilled, soiled, drawn up again, cleaned, and returned at last…”
So, it almost seems like the hand of the Father had reached through the gate opened by the Golden General and was granting him great power, but when the Bastard’s death demon carried off the General, the gate slammed shut, slicing off the hand and trapping it in the material world. And the General’s dying rage had infused this borrowed part of the Father with a new mission of revenge.
The idea that the curse could take on an almost-life of its own, continuing to work after the General’s death and apparently beyond the control of the Father, is horrifying—and fascinating. It brings to mind Penric’s opinion of shamanic geases: “Geases could be nasty almost-organisms at times, parasitizing the life of their victim for their own prolongation.” Could there be some connection? All we know for sure is that the curse was not something the Father wanted, or intended, and that all the gods were working to bring the ‘exiled thing’ back where it belonged. Cazaril’s sacrifice opened a hole through which the Daughter could work to bring it back. It’s interesting to ponder if the earlier attempt by Ista, Ias, and dy Lutez had worked whether it would have been the Mother or the Father himself who would have done the deed.
So much for the curse. But now we have another, perhaps even more tangled, question to ponder: Why did the Father give such a gift to the Golden General in the first place? And why did the Bastard allow Fonsa to bring down a death demon to stop him?
The first part of the question, is, I think, harder to answer. As Umegat states: “The gods love their great-souled men and women as an artist loves fine marble,” but why did the Father love the Golden General so much? The Golden General was not a healer, he did not swallow demons, he did not dispense justice (at least not in the usual judiciary sense), or do any of the other things the ‘usual’ saints do in the world. No, what the Golden General did was make war. He was a conqueror. He had united the five Roknari princedoms on the north coast of the Ibran Peninsula and was driving southward into the Quintarian territories, intending to conquer the lands all the way to Darthaca and perhaps beyond. Centuries earlier, the Roknari had invaded from the sea and taken most of the Peninsula before being slowly driven back to the relatively small enclaves on the northern coast. The Golden General wanted to reverse this shrinkage and again claim the entire peninsula—and perhaps a lot more. And, of course, the General was a devout Quadrene, who considered the Bastard as a demon and worship of Him sacrilege. A successful conquest would see the massacre of the Bastard’s clergy, destruction of their facilities and towers, and harsh persecution of any who still dared worship him.
Was the Father in favor of all that?
Sure seems like it. But we hear again and again throughout all the World of the Five Gods stories that the gods DON’T care about human politics or who the king is here or there or who rules what country. They care about souls, and the soul of a peasant is as precious to them as the soul of a king. So would the Father care about who ruled the Peninsula? If the answer is yes, then that sets him apart from the other gods. If no then what is the reason?
One theory (and this is a bit uncomfortable) is that the Father isn’t happy with the Bastard being part of the Holy Family. The Mother, of course, loves the Bastard and his half-siblings, the Son and the Daughter, probably tolerate their weird half-brother, but the Father…? If he was human, it might be reasonable to expect him to not like the bastard child his wayward wife brought into being. But He’s not human, He’s a god. And yet He’s favoring a man who, if successful, will wipe out the worship of the Bastard in a large region of the world, and who knows, perhaps the whole world. Why would he do this? Is it just out of spite? It’s tempting to think that perhaps a god’s strength is based on the number of believers he has and if there are no believers, perhaps the god will… die? An interesting theory, but it doesn’t match the Tale of Beginnings that Learned dy Cabon recites at the start of Ista’s journey which states that the gods came into being long before there was anyone to worship them. And yet Umegat does tell Cazaril that: “’It is said that if one god ever subsumes all the others, truth will become single, and simple, and perfect and the world will end in a burst of light’”. Could that actually happen? Could the Father weaken the Bastard sufficiently to ‘subsume him? Or is this all just some theological conundrum to be debated but never answered?
We have no answer to these questions, but we do know one thing and it is very, very important: The Bastard sent a death demon to kill the Golden General. And this is where things get very strange.
Penric, in “Knot of shadows” states: “Some desperate person, all other avenues of justice blocked, prays for the death of someone guilty of some deep villainy; and offers up their own life in payment for the deed. If the white god hears and agrees, He sends His dedicated death demon to snatch both souls.” He goes on to say: “… and the other [the target of the death magic] to have committed the terrible, irreparable, and unrepented sin. Theft alone doesn’t qualify, or a whole lot more pickpockets, bandits, and pirates would be dropping mysteriously dead. Conquering kings and armies, too.”
It is hard to see the Golden General qualifying as such a person. He’s a favored child of the Father after all. As a conqueror he’s probably been responsible for a lot of death and suffering, but Penric states, that’s not enough. And it can easily be confirmed that the World of the Five Gods has had plenty of wars and plenty of conquerors and generals and few if any of them have ever been taken off by death demons.
Umegat says: “’The true miracles [of death magic] were much more rare than their notoriety would suggest. But I never encountered an authentic case where the victim was an innocent. To put it more finely still, what the Bastard granted was miracles of justice.’” Now we can assume that Umegat was a bit biased concerning the Golden General, but he says nothing to indicate that he was guilty of “the terrible, irreparable, and unrepented sin” that would make him a candidate for the Bastard’s justice.
And yet the Bastard took him. Roya Fonsa’s prayer was accepted and the Bastard dispatched his demon to collect the two souls. But why? The most obvious answer is that He didn’t want the Golden General to win and to wipe out worship of the Bastard in the Peninsula. So was this a mercy to his followers – or an act of self-preservation? Whichever, you have the extraordinary situation of one god striking down a favored follower of another god. It’s hard to imagine this happening often—or perhaps ever.
And there we have it: The Father’s great gift to the Golden General, Fonsa and the Bastard cutting him down, the Curse spilling out on to Fonsa and his heirs, and Cazaril and the Daughter bringing it back where it belongs. A great story, with great deeds – and a great, mystery.