Penric and the Shaman

XIII

Getting the two men off the ledge took over an hour. Like the injured shaman, the sorcerer waited to ride the rope net down; unlike the shaman, he stepped out of it with the panache of a prince descending a palace stair. When taxed by Oswyl, Penric claimed that it was much harder to climb down than up, because he couldn’t well see where he was putting his hands and feet. No mountaineer, Oswyl had to take him at his word. It was hardly a thing to balk at, considering what all else of the uncanny events he was forced to take the sorcerer-divine’s testimony for. The eager Acolyte Gallin ate up their wild tale like a starving man, and asked for seconds. The guards and the valemen grew wide-eyed. In all, it was rising dark before they made it back to Linkbeck once more.

Inglis, certainly, seemed a man profoundly changed, unless the fall had struck him mad. Madder. When they’d cleaned up, and Penric in his third guise as physician had seen to their prisoner’s new bruises, they all went down to dinner, where Gallin and Gossa were slavishly grateful—to Inglis. For Gossa, this took the form of trying to stuff him like a feast-day goose, and feeding his dogs like people. Penric beguiled his own neglect by telling the servant girl, who turned out to be the daughter of the village wet-nurse, all about the fine opportunities for an energetic young woman in the silk industry at Martensbridge, under the princess-archdivine’s careful eye.

Oswyl finally broke it up by announcing an early start in the morning. As they mounted the staircase, he said to Inglis, “You are still my prisoner. Still under arrest. And we are still going back to Easthome.”

“Oh, yes,” said Inglis, pensively. “It’s all very good now. And if it is not, there will be something better.”

For his part, Oswyl predicted a blizzard with the dawn.

In the blackest hour of the night, Oswyl dreamed.

A deep, slow voice, which seemed to reverberate to the ends of the world, said judiciously: “You were not too late. Well done, child.” After a thoughtful pause it added, in a far less grave tone, “No snow tomorrow. But do not linger three days.”

Oswyl, scrambling to sit up, came awake with a cry. He didn’t know if the sound was night-terror or joy, but it was loud.

Dogs yipped, covers were thrown back, and Penric’s voice out of the shadows called, “Des, lights, lights!” He then cried in fear, “He’ll burn my eyes!” and replied to himself, “You haven’t got eyes. I do and they’re just fine. Or they would be if there were any light in here. Thank you,” he added, as upon the washstand the two tallow candles sprang into flame all by themselves.

Oswyl, clutching his blankets, gasped, “He… He…”

“Are you all right?” asked Penric, concerned. “You sound like a horse with the heaves.”

“Nothing. Nothing,” Oswyl managed, trying to catch his stolen breath. “Pardon.”

“Judging from Des’s reaction, it was not nothing.” He added, “You can come out now. I think it’s over.” He twisted around to Inglis, who was sinking sleepily back into his bedroll, and coaxing the dog Blood to lie down to be clutched like another pillow. “Did you sense anything, just now?”

“No… I don’t think it was meant for me.” He cuddled the dog, which slowly gave up its alert mien and put its head on its paws once more. Arrow stepped over, and on, Penric in his trundle— provoking an, “Oof, you enormous beast! Paws off!”—and stretched his damp black nose to sniff curiously at Oswyl.

“It was just a dream,” said Oswyl. “Maybe, maybe a little hallucination. It’s been a long day.” And a long, strange chase.

“A bad dream?”

Oswyl hardly knew, except the corners of his mouth kept crooking up, unaccustomed and unwilled. “No… It was… a different kind of frightening.” He added, “How can you tell? Discern a true voice from, from a mere dream?”

“If you need to ask, it was a mere dream. The other is rare but, hm, not as rare as you’d think. Our daytime minds, I’m told, are too full of ourselves to let Them in. Well, and mine’s too full all the time. At night our gates come sometimes ajar, just enough.”

Oswyl’s brows drew down. “That’s… unhelpful.”

“What was your message?”

He wasn’t embarrassed, exactly. But… “I’d rather not say. It would sound too absurd.”

Penric, propped up on one elbow, studied him thoughtfully. He finally said, “A bit of free theological advice. Do not deny the gods. And they will not deny you.”

As Oswyl stared at him, he went on, “Dangerous habit, mind you. Once you start to let Them in through that first crack, They’re worse than mice.”

Oswyl, thoroughly bemused by now, protested, “How can you speak of the gods so irreverently? And you a full-braid divine?”

Penric shrugged a half-apology. “Sorry. Seminary joke, there. We had a hundred of them. Needful at times of stress. One of my masters said, For all that we trust the gods, I think we can trust them to know the difference between humor and blasphemy.”

“Not so sure about your god,” Inglis’s voice came from his bedroll.

“Hey. Yours is no better. A god whose harvest of souls includes all whose last words were, ‘Ho, lads! Hold my ale and watch this!’ …Seminary joke,” he added aside to Oswyl, who hardly needed the gloss.

Inglis snickered into his dog, and then mused, “That would be funnier if it weren’t so true.”

“If it were not true, it wouldn’t be funny at all.”

The two young scholars seemed willing to debate the theology of humor, or the humor of theology, till dawn. Oswyl said loudly, “You can snuff the candles back out, now. I’m all right.”

Penric smiled at him, eyes narrowing. “Ye-es. I expect you are.”

“Want to borrow a dog?” Inglis offered. “They’re very soothing.”

“In my bed? No, thank you.”

Arrow, snuffling over the edge of Oswyl’s blankets, heaved a disappointed sigh, as if finding that the source of some delicious scent had gone.

“What,” said Penric, “they don’t have fleas—don’t everyone rush to praise me. And Gossa made her children wash their paws.”

“You are welcome to him,” said Oswyl, shoving the beast back into the trundle. “You, go sit on your master.” Giving up on his riotous company, Oswyl struggled from his bedclothes and went to blow out the candles himself.

The heavy snow did not close in till after they’d reached the safety and warmth of Martensbridge, three days later.