Penric and the Shaman

XIV

At the knock on his workroom door, Pen looked up from his calligraphy and said, “Come.”

The door swung open cautiously, and a palace page entered. “The Temple courier has brought you some letters, Learned.”

Pen set his quill in its jar and turned to accept them. “Thank you.”

The girl ducked her head and, after a last curious look around, went out again.

Penric examined his take. The thinner missive was marked with a Temple stamp from the Father’s Order in Easthome; the larger, wrapped in a piece of old cloth and waxed against wet, had been franked by the Wealdean royal court chancellery. He opened it first, to find a letter and an unbound book, freshly copied and pristine. Both from Inglis, ah.

It had been over a month since Oswyl and his prisoner, and his prisoner’s vigorous pets, had departed for Easthome. Penric had managed to evade being taken along by virtue of the week they’d all spent snowbound in Martensbridge, which had allowed him to scribble out a full deposition of the late events in Chillbeck Vale, heavily slanted in Inglis’s favor. Normally a trip to the Wealdean royal capital at the Temple’s expense would have been a high treat, but—not in midwinter, despite Oswyl’s descriptions of the fine Father’s Day festival put on there at the solstice. Not my season.

Nor mine, sighed Des. Did I ever tell you about the sun on the sea around Cedonia?

Several times. He’d never seen a sea, warm or cold. Could a demon be homesick? Pen wondered, and broke the seal on Inglis’s letter.

Inglis thanked him for his deposition, which had done the trick—the shaman did not appear to be writing from a condemned prisoner’s cell, certainly. You were right that the god-drunk wears off, Inglis wrote, for I was very sober when we reached Easthome. I have been strongly reprimanded by the Royal Fellowship, and put on probation, whatever that means, but not dis-invested. I am not sure anyone can actually do that, or at least, no records of such a skill have surfaced in the ancient annals. It seems the old method of execution for bad shamans was to hang them upside down and drain them of blood, which no one in the Fellowship has suggested even for the experiment.

The Father’s judges after much debate finally ordered me to pay a fine to Tollin’s family, in the old style, by way of weregild. My parents had to borrow some of it from our kin lord, which did not please anyone very much, but I trust they’d have been less pleased to see me feet-up with my throat cut. Oswyl says I should just give up on Tolla, but I am not so sure. She did listen to my tale and mark my scars. Tollin’s second funeral was a comfort to his family, I think, though redundant, as I saw very well which god took him up, and told them so. I’m not sure some believed me until their local temple’s holy animal signed Autumn at his graveside.

I had a copy made for you of the Fellowship’s writings on shamanic practices that you wanted to read, at least as they are understood so far. I hope we’ll need a second volume in a few more years. It seems small thanks, but it was what I could do. You should find it under seal with this letter.

He signed it with a flourishing Inglis kin Wolfcliff, Fellow of the Royal Society of Shamans (on probation). And added, as a cramped postscript at the bottom of the sheet, The dogs are well, and settling into their new home. We maintain a bit of a menagerie here, so they fit right in. They like Tolla.

Penric’s fingers itched to dive for the new volume, but he opened the thinner letter instead. As he’d hoped, it was from Oswyl.

You may be pleased to learn that your affidavit was accepted by the court, though immediately afterward seized upon by some theologians and carried off. From the legal side of things, there is no sign that anyone wants you brought here in person after all. The other I cannot speak to. Inglis got off lightly, but I do not feel there was injustice done.

My former sorcerer and his party arrived back at Easthome about two weeks after we did, frostbitten, footsore, and empty-handed. Happily, their official complaints of me were stopped by word of my success. Their private ones, I feel no need to attend to.

I set an offering on your god’s altar the other day, in Temple.

His signature was neat and square, Oswyl, Senior Locator, the Father’s Order at Easthome.

He, too, added a cramped last word: I am not sure how demons feel about blessings, so please just give my best wishes to Desdemona.

Des was so astonished, she was momentarily silent.

Penric smiled and reached for his new book.