Penric and the Shaman

XI

In the gray dawn, a bleary Inglis sat up in his bedroll and begged Penric, “Let me blood my knife.”

Pen eyed him dubiously. “You’ve done this every day? All through your flight?”

“Yes.”

Was this necessary? Tollin’s ghost was surely still lingering, if in an odd form, wrapped around the knife like fine wool on a woman’s distaff. And no more faded than Scuolla’s spirit, sitting sadly on its rock. And no less faded, either. Penric was extremely curious to witness the inner working of this shamanic rite. Opinions, Des?

I am out of my reckoning, here. Ruchia’s shaman never demonstrated more than the weirding voice in front of us, small help though it was to him. His other enthralling skills were entirely human. If, perhaps, informed by a superior perception…

Pen cut off what promised to be a lengthy, if ribald, reminiscence. It seemed he was on his own for this judgment. “Very well, then.”

Oswyl, halfway through shaving at the basin, turned around, folded his razor and stuck it in his trouser pocket, caught up his short sword from where it had stood propped by the head of his bed, grabbed Pen by the arm, stepped around a dog, and hauled him out into the narrow hallway, shutting the door firmly behind them. He drew Pen along to the head of the staircase, and whispered in a furious undervoice, “Are you mad? You want to hand him back a weapon, that weapon? Which is also vital evidence, may I remind you.”

“It’s more vital than that. He’s not lying about the knife. It does anchor Tollin’s spirit.” And an uncomfortable itch in Pen’s perceptions it was, Tollin’s not-quite-yet-sundered soul held so close to his heart. “Once I watch him through this, I’ll be sure of a lot more.”

Oswyl’s glare heated. “Scholars,” he said in a voice of loathing. “You would dangle your arm in a bucket of adders, just to see if it was true that they bit.”

Pen’s grin flicked, quickly suppressed. “Once I’ve seen, I’ll know if it’s true he must do this daily to sustain Tollin. In which case you’re going to have to let him do it every morning all the way back to Easthome, as routine as washing his face or shaving.”

“I’m not letting him have a razor, either.”

Pen sobered. “That, I would agree with. Nevertheless, I would ask you to stand prepared for any sudden moves.”

“Quite. Sorcerers aren’t immune to steel, I understand.”

“Actually, Des has a clever trick for that, though I still don’t understand how she can equate steel to wood.” And this was one knife he most certainly couldn’t let her change into a puff of rust in a heartbeat. “But I think Inglis is more likely to turn the knife on himself.” As Oswyl’s scowl failed to shift, he added, “I can’t think you’d be any happier explaining the suicide of your prisoner than you would his escape.”

“Much less,” Oswyl bit out.

“There’s more. If we lose him, through escape or escape into death, I suspect Tollin can’t be sustained, and any hope for Scuolla is lost as well. And Inglis’s soul hangs in the same balance. They are like three men roped together on a glacier. If the last man can’t hold the other two, all will perish in the crevice together.”

Oswyl, the lather drying on half his face, thought this over. “I don’t see how Inglis can rescue anyone if he doesn’t have his powers.”

“Neither does he, but I have an idea or two in that direction.”

“Five gods, you don’t imagine to restore them?” said Oswyl, exasperated. “That would be worse than handing him knife, razor, and dogs together. Why not a saddled horse and a purse of gold, while you are about it?”

“Haven’t got a purse of gold,” Pen said primly, and was rewarded with the sight of the half-shaved Grayjay baring his teeth. “Besides, in any country so well supplied with precipices as this one, a man doesn’t need special tools to end his woes.” By his expression, this, too, was a picture Oswyl would have preferred to live without. “As for those dogs… I’m still thinking about those dogs.”

Stiff with reluctance, Oswyl followed Pen back into the bedchamber.

“All right,” said Pen, dropping down cross-legged on the bedroll in front of Inglis. He reached back and untied the thongs, sleep-snarled with his queue. After pulling out a few fine hairs, he fished the sheath from his shirt, laid it in his lap, and drew the blade. It was a lovely piece of the armorer’s art, all lethal curves, capped with old gold and blood-red gems. He held it out hilt-forward to Inglis. “Do what you must.”

Inglis took it gingerly, as if he expected Pen to snatch it back like some child’s cruel game of keep-away. The dogs on their bellies crept up to either side of him, like furry buttresses. His hand spasmed as it closed on the ivory hilt, and Oswyl, standing over them all with his sword drawn, twitched. But Inglis only rolled back his sleeves and looked his arms over.

Pen stared too. There was scarcely a patch of skin unmarred by red scars, brown scabs, or sticky red lines, with angry pink welts of flesh puffing up between. Double that for the trip back to Easthome, and the man would be flayed. Inglis found a bare spot and lined up the edge, and Penric thought, Des, lend me Sight.

The trembling blade sliced, skin split red, and Pen’s teeth twinged in sympathetic echo. The view was not much different from his unaided vision, except that Inglis’s welling blood bore a strange silver sheen, like moonlight rippling off a wolf’s pelt. He stropped the knife up and down, coating every inch. The spirit-wool moved with it, trailing smoke that circled back and settled on the blood. Pen tried not to think of flies swarming on carrion. But the spirit did, indeed, seem to draw nourishment from the strange feast, its density thickening as the blood dried and the silver sheen died.

No, indeed. I don’t think our blood would serve the same, murmured Des. As Inglis’s fingers started to clench again, Pen leaned forward and wrapped his hand around the shaman’s. “I’ll just be having that back now. For safekeeping.”

After a brief moment of tension, Inglis let his fingers grow slack, and Pen pried the hilt out of his grip. Oswyl waited sword in hand, not yet standing down.

Inglis choked out, “Don’t sheathe it till the blood is fully dry. It won’t take long. The brown rubs right off with a cloth.”

“Right,” said Pen, and waited. The trailing smoke seemed to withdraw into the main body of the bound spirit. The sticky turned to crumbly, a few passes on the thighs of Penric’s trousers brushed it away, and he slid the gleaming steel out of sight again. Des let the vision of Tollin’s ghost disappear, a debatable relief.

Breakfast was a quieter meal, as the house’s children had not yet returned, although the servant girl had. The six guests, or five guests and one prisoner, were fed on oat porridge with butter, cheese, barley bread, and autumn apples. The dogs loitered lazily by the doors, not enticed by the meatless repast. Conversation was desultory and practical. But Gallin and Gossa seemed very aware of Inglis, and not as a criminal.

Penric had to agree, Inglis had made a terrible criminal. His heart wasn’t in it at all. Whatever visions of heroic capture of a villain had beguiled Pen on the ride here, the event had been sadly disappointing. Though if stupid panic is what’s wanted, there’s your man, muttered Des.

I doubt I would have done much better, if I’d killed my best friend by mistake with my new powers, Pen thought back.

I wouldn’t have let you. Nothing remotely like that has happened to a rider of mine… Des seemed to hesitate. For a very, very long time.

Your argument nibbles its own tail, I think?

Humph. But she settled again.

The guard sergeant asked Oswyl, “Should we prepare for the road, sir? We need to see to securing an extra horse.”

Oswyl set down his spoon and sat back. “If we can do nothing more here, we should depart, yes.”

“You are most welcome to stay longer,” put in Acolyte Gallin, with studied emphasis. “A day or so more will not matter.”

“Thank you, Acolyte, but I must disagree. Every day we linger risks us being caught by the next snow.”

Pen disagreed with both. Might a day or two more here make all the difference, to some?

Gallin bit his lip. “Learned Penric, I would like to speak to you apart. About some Temple matters that concern me.”

As a Grayjay, Oswyl was just as much a servant of the Temple as Penric or Gallin, but he permitted Pen to be abstracted from the table with no more than a dry glance Pen’s way. The guards looked alarmed to be thus deprived of whatever magical protection they imagined Pen to be providing them, but even if Inglis, Pen didn’t know what…weirded them all to sleep and hobbled off, he wouldn’t even be able to get as far as the stable before Pen caught him again.

Gallin took Pen to his parlor-study and closed the door, gesturing Pen to sit. When they were knee to knee, he lowered his voice and said directly, “I prayed for help. Are you it?”

Pen sighed unease. “If so, no One has told me. I do not suffer prophetic dreams.” He would add, Thank the gods, but that seemed to fall under the heading of what his mother had used to call coaxing lumps.

“Still, the gods are parsimonious, they say.”

“I understand your drift, I suppose. A Grayjay who hates to be late has arrived at the last hour, bringing me, just in time to intersect a shaman who was running away. One need not be delusory to think something is expected of us.” If Inglis had been in command of his powers, the shaman’s role would be obvious, but then, if he’d been in command of his powers, he could have cleansed Tollin’s soul on the spot back at Easthome, and be doing, well, who knew what who knew where by now. Pen’s own role so far reminded him of those caravan guards mustered in a mass not to fight off bandits, but to dissuade them from attacking in the first place. Which, he had to admit, was by far the best imaginable use of a force of arms.

“Are Inglis’s powers truly broken, as he claimed?”

Penric hesitated. “His powers appear to me to be intact. Only his guilt and distraught mind seem to be blocking his full access to them.”

“Can you do something about that? With your powers?”

“The natural directions of my skills are to mar, not to mend. And they work on things, not minds. Mainly.” And Inglis’s worked on minds, not things. A peculiar reciprocity, now that Pen considered it.

Gallin’s fingers pulled at each other. “Then perhaps it’s not your skills as a sorcerer that are wanted, but your skills as a divine. Perhaps you are the one meant to give him spiritual counsel?”

Penric was taken aback. “That… wasn’t a subject I spent much time on at seminary. It’s a rather horrible joke, if so.”

Gallin half-laughed. “That’s no proof it wasn’t from your god. More the reverse.”

And so the facetious brag he’d made to Oswyl, about being a divine five-fold, curled back to bite him now. Of all the tasks he’d imagined undertaking on the Grayjay’s wolf-hunt, whether as sorcerer or bowman-hero, sage counselor wasn’t even on the list.

So, murmured Des. Now we see why you are so quick to leave your braids in your saddlebags.

That wasn’t it! he began to argue back, and stopped. He raised his face to Gallin’s, again. “You’ve served here for many years. You knew Scuolla, as a friend and as a shaman. Surely you must be better fitted for such a task?”

Gallin shook his head. “Friend, yes, I hope so. But I can’t say as I ever understood what he did with his dogs, except to observe that there seemed no malice in it, or in him. But you and Inglis kin Wolfcliff, you are both brothers in the uncanny. You see things veiled from me. Maybe you can see the way out of this tangle, too.”

Penric cleared his throat, embarrassed. “I admit, I had an idea or two. But it was just for things to try. Not any kind of wisdom. Oswyl thought it high foolishness, in fact.”

“Locator Oswyl wants to leave, I gather. Can you not overrule him?”

“The princess-archdivine assigned me to him, not him to me. The task was his to start with before it grew”—Pen hesitated—“so complicated.”

“Could he hold Inglis without your aid?”

“Well…” Penric reflected on the possibilities inherent in that weirding voice, were it to be deployed without restraint. Not to mention the other shamanic skills. “No.”

“It seems you are the linchpin in this wheel, then. If you elect to stay, he cannot take Inglis and go.”

“That… would seem to be the case, yes.”

“Then I beg you to stay. And apply your ideas. Or counsel. Or wisdom, or unwisdom, or whatever you may dub it.” Gallin drew breath. “You have to try, at least.”

Pen imagined a prayer, or a holy whine—to the white god, either would do—If You don’t like it, give me something better.

The silence in his head was profound. Even Des did not chaff or chatter.

Penric managed a nod. Trying not to let his doubts show, he returned to the breakfast table to shepherd Inglis—and the two dogs—back to their bedchamber.

They settled cross-legged facing each other on the bedroll once more. Blood flopped down across the doorway and sighed; Arrow sat up beside Inglis and appeared to watch with more than canine interest.

“All right.” Penric took a breath. “What I’m going to do here is give you a clean new chant to gate your entry into your spirit space.”

Inglis shot him a stare of surprise and offense. “What makes you think you can do the first thing about it? Sorcerer.”

“I’m the one who’s here. That seems to be the most vital point at present.” Refusing to wilt under Inglis’s frown, Penric forged on, “My call shall be, ‘Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Other.’ And your response shall be, ‘Bless this work and let me serve another.’ ”

“Is that supposed to be the blessing?”

“No, that’s your chant. I thought I’d combine the two and save steps.”

Inglis met his bright smile with a deepening glower. “It’s a stupid rhyme.”

“I’m a sorcerer, not a poet.”

“Evidently. It’s not even a quatrain.”

“Repeat it, and it will turn into a quatrain.”

Inglis looked ready to rebel. Or at least to refuse to cooperate. And what Penric would do then, he had no idea.

Des muscled into brief control of his mouth, and said in honeyed tones, “Or you could pray, ‘Other, Mother, Father, Brother, Sister. Thwack my head and make me less a blister.’ ” Pen failed to control the upward crook of his lips as she fell back.

After a long, black silence Inglis said, “Use the first one.”

“Good,” said Pen. And a firm, No more interruptions now, to Des. She settled back, falsely demure. “I’ll begin. Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Other…”

They began to repeat the call and response much as Inglis and his possibly-not-that-long-ago mentor had. The mindful if simple (or simple-minded, Des put in) prayer really did grow boring after enough repetitions. A while after that, the syllables began to lose any meaning or connection at all, a steady, soothing double drone. Pen did not let up until both their tongues started stumbling, when he called a break.

Nothing had happened. Well, he hadn’t expected it to, Pen lied to himself. All right, he’d been hopeful.

“How often did your shamanic master repeat your practice sessions?” asked Pen.

“It varied, depending on his duties and mine. Sometimes, once or twice a day. Sometimes dozens.”

“And how long did you drill at a time?”

“Much as now, till our tongues grew too tired to fruitfully go on. That, too, varied.”

“Hm.” Penric slapped his knees and stood up. “Rest your tongue, then. And your leg.”

Inglis at least did not argue with this injunction.

Pen found one of their guards seated at the top of the staircase. “Where is Oswyl?”

“He walked over to the temple, I think, sir.”

“Thank you.” Penric threaded his way through the house and turned onto the street. The temple stood as quiet and dim as yesterday when they’d surprised Inglis inside. Once again, the hall held only one supplicant. Oswyl sat upon his knees before the altar dedicated to the Father, tucked up against its one-fifth portion of the wooden walls. His head turned at the sound of Penric’s steps.

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Don’t let me interrupt,” said Pen. And then, incurably curious, asked, “What do you pray for?”

Oswyl’s lips thinned. “Guidance.”

“Oh? I thought everything we’ve encountered here shouts our course at us. Or are you just angling for a different answer?”

Oswyl turned back toward his chosen god’s altar once more, the very set of his shoulders sturdily ignoring Pen.

Pen walked to the hall’s opposite side and studied his god’s niche. The shrines here had a profusion of woodcarvings, common in country temples in this region. On the lintel, the carver had placed a well-observed flight of crows; in a lower corner, some earnest-looking rats. The Daughter’s shrine, to Penric’s right, was decorated with an explosion of wooden flowers and young animals, painted in their proper colors, a muted glow in the shadows. A supplicant prayed before a shrine, Penric’s teachers had made clear, not to it. He lowered himself to his knees. Emptying his mind was not an option, but he didn’t need to badger the gods, either. He waited.

After a while, Oswyl’s voice came from across the hall: “Did you get anywhere with your tutoring?”

Not turning, Pen answered, “Not yet.”

A wordless grunt.

After a little, Pen said, “He’s not really a murderer, you know.”

A pause: then, “My task is to bring a fugitive to justice. Not to judge him.”

“Yet you must use your judgment. You followed your own line on the Crow Road.”

A considering silence.

“I have another trial in mind,” Penric continued. “I want to take Inglis out to the rock fall, and see what he can make of old Scuolla.” And what Scuolla would make of him?

A mere pained sigh was all that this elicited. What, was he finally wearing Oswyl down? It occurred to Penric that Oswyl was not so rigidly rules-bound as his stiff jaw suggested; only doubt need pray for guidance. He hoped Oswyl would get his answer. Penric went on speaking to his own wall: “Inglis is in less pain than yesterday. Calmer, if not less bleak. I expect I should take Gallin. And the dogs. We’ll need one of the guardsmen’s horses. Do you wish to come? Given you’ve no hand in the uncanny.”

Oswyl’s voice returned, distantly, “Having spent this long and come this far to find him, I’m not losing sight of him again.”

“Well, then.” Penric bowed his head and signed the tally, and they both rose together.