Penric and the Shaman

III

To Oswyl’s relief, the princess-archdivine took his tale seriously enough to gift him with both the loan of her court sorcerer, and of a small troop of her palace guards, local men of the Daughter’s Order whose calling was to protect Temple property and pilgrims. To his frustration, the expanded party was not readied until the morning.

He’d used the time as well as he could, canvassing the lower town across the Linnet River where merchants and caravans stopped, and where the inns, taverns, smithies, saddlers, liveries, and other businesses catering to the trade of travelers were congregated. The docks and quays servicing the lake traffic were growing quieter with the advancing season, although the lake had not yet frozen over. But in neither venue was he able to unearth any sure report of a lone traveler matching his quarry’s description.

The laggard winter sun was rising gray and gold as they cleared the town gates and at last took to the main road north, skirting the lake’s western margin. It had stopped snowing, leaving no more than a finger’s width of dirty white trampled on the half-frozen ruts. As the town fell behind and the long valley lake widened, Oswyl stared across doubtfully at the farther shore, dark against the dawn. All farm tracks and rugged scrubland climbing the heights on that side, he’d been told, a route unlikely to be chosen by a fugitive in a hurry. But what about a fugitive wishing to hide? For all that this realm had looked small on a map, it seemed much more spacious on the ground.

No, take it logically; search the most likely possibilities first, then the lesser. He stared between his horse’s bobbing ears, and tried not to feel so tired.

Turning in his saddle, he checked their outriders, a sergeant-at-arms and four men, all looking sturdy enough bundled against the cold, then glanced aside at his new sorcerer. At least this one rode better than the last one, who had been a town-bred man of considerable seniority but also age and girth. This Penric looked a lean youth, with fine blond hair now tied back in a braid at his nape, and deep blue eyes whose cheer, at this hour, Oswyl found far more irksome than charming. It was hard to believe that he held the rank of a learned divine. Or the powers of a Temple sorcerer, either.

To top it off, the princess-archdivine had divided the purse for this venture, for which he was grateful, between the sergeant and the sorcerer, for which he was not. They were her own trusted men, to be sure, but just such a split in authority had been a chief source of infuriating delays in his ride from Easthome. The Temple remounts were a plain blessing, though, and he composed a prayer of thanksgiving in his mind to the Daughter of Spring for Her mercies, howsoever conveyed through Her prickly handmaiden the princess. Archdivines had seldom come Oswyl’s way, princesses never; both combined in one person, who reminded Oswyl unnervingly of his most forcible aunt, had been daunting. Though her sorcerer had seemed entirely at his ease in her company, as if she were his aunt indeed.

Some ten miles down the road the cavalcade approached a handsome castle, built on an islet a little out from the lakeshore, that had had been growing in Oswyl’s eye and interest. As they drew even with it, Learned Penric twitched his horse aside and rode out on the causeway. The drawbridge was fallen in, its timbers blackened. The interior was shadowed, deserted and dismal.

Penric stared meditatively, then muttered, “Huh,” and turned his horse back.

“What was this place? What happened to it?” Oswyl asked, looking over his shoulder as he followed.

“Castle Martenden. The clan of kin Martenden used to be something of a force in this region, for good or ill, but four years ago last spring the fortress was gutted with fire. Its lord had been charged with an, er, attempted murder, but fought his way free of the town guard and fled north over the mountains with a remnant of his men. He was reported to have raised a mercenary company in Carpagamo, but, happily, instead of returning to make trouble here, he took them on to the wars on the Ibran peninsula, where he may well have better hopes of restoring his fortunes.”

The endemic wars against the Roknari Quadrene heretics in those far realms were a noted sink of landless men, both honorable ones and rogues. Oswyl nodded understanding. “But why hasn’t it been repaired and put back into use by the town, to guard the road?”

“Tied up in litigation. Lord kin Martenden managed to be both attainted by the town council for his crime, and interdicted by the Temple for, er, certain impieties, so both claimed the spoils. The law courts of Martensbridge have been as good as a cockpit ever since. Townsmen take bets on the outcomes of the latest appeals.”

Oswyl considered this tale, lips pursing. “Was he actually guilty of the crime charged, do you have any idea? Because… interests can have strange effects on such disputes.” He frowned in speculation.

“Oh,” said Penric airily, “I’m sure he was. There were warranted witnesses. And confessions.”

The sorcerer then directed his attention to the hamlet on the opposite side of the road, and its shabby inn and alehouse, as a source of hot cider and information. While the troop took advantage of the former, Oswyl pursued the latter. Yes, the tapster opined, there might have been such a young man pass through a week ago, but many travelers refreshed themselves here, though few lingered, pushing on instead to the larger towns at the lake’s head or foot. Not for the first time, Oswyl wished Inglis kin Wolfcliff had possessed the courtesy and foresight to be born with a large portwine birthmark on his face, or six fingers on his left hand, or grown to a giant of a man, or a dwarf, or had a limp or a stammer, or anything memorable at all.

“Do you think you will be able to identify the accursed man, should we ever come up to him?” Oswyl, exasperated, asked Penric as they mounted and headed north once more.

The youth looked introspective for a moment. “Oh, yes. If he’s an invested shaman, Desdemona can’t mistake him.”

“And who,” Oswyl went on, not less exasperated, “is this bloody Desdemona woman you keep going on about?” Wife? Sister? Leman? Not a member of this party, in any case.

Penric—Learned Penric, the gods help them all—blinked. “Oh! I’m sorry. I did not realize you had not been introduced. Desdemona is my demon.” He smiled cheerily across at Oswyl.

“You named your demon?”

“Really, it was necessary. To keep all of her straight. She’s quite a complicated person.”

In Oswyl’s theology, demons were not persons at all, but elemental forces of… un-nature. From the gods, or at least, from one god, but not by that reason holy. “I thought demons were fundamental chaos. Not capable of being anything.”

“They all start out that way, it’s true. Not anything at first. Rather like a newborn infant. But like an infant, they learn. Or perhaps copy. They learn from the people and the world around them, and they carry much of that learning along with them as they cascade down through time from master to master. Everything about them that might be called either good or evil comes ultimately from their human riders.”

Oswyl frowned at this novel view. “I thought they were inherently destructive, and dangerous withal.”

“Well, so they are, but destruction need not be inherently evil. It depends upon how cleverly it is deployed. When Desdemona was the possession of Learned Helvia, who was a physician, she destroyed stones of the bladder, a very painful condition I am told, and warts, and sometimes even tumors.” He added after a distracted moment, “And worms, that were debilitating their victims. Though an apothecary’s vermifuge could do that task as well.”

If sorcerers were rare, physician-sorcerers were rarer still. “I have never met such a practitioner.”

“I gather they are kept rather apart by the Mother’s Order, to spare them for special tasks.” After a thoughtful moment, he added, “Their sex, too, is something demons learn. Desdemona has been possessed by some ten women over time—plus the mare and the lioness—so she’s grown quite feminine by now. She’s an exceptionally old demon. It’s rude to tell a woman’s age, Penric!” His hand flew to his lips. “Uh, sorry. That was Des.”

“It… talks? With your mouth? And yet it is not ascendant?”

“She. Yes, she does, and no, she’s not. They can get quite chatty, among the ten of them. So if I say something strange, ah… it might not always be me. I should warn you of that, I suppose.”

A sudden change in demeanor and speech was supposed to be one way an observer who was not a Temple sensitive could tell if a demon had ascended, seizing control of its rider’s body for itself. But if the demon was leaking out all the time, how could it be discerned if such an emergency had occurred? Oswyl edged his horse slightly farther from the sorcerer’s.

Penric piffled on, “Back at seminary I once sat down with a quill and paper and tried to work out her exact age, going back through all her riders one by one. Connecting them to some dated king’s reign or public event whenever we could.”

Reluctantly fascinated, Oswyl asked, “How do you keep them all straight? Or do you?”

Penric let his reins fall to his plodding horse’s neck, held up both hands, and wriggled the digits, as if pleased to find them in place there. “Ten ladies, ten fingers. Very convenient.”

“Ah,” Oswyl managed.

“The Temple had planned to gift their star demon to another physician when Helvia died, but instead it jumped to a senior acolyte named Ruchia, who was of Martensbridge here. Oh, I see”—Penric blinked absently—“Helvia was visiting Martensbridge at the time. I’d wondered about that. Anyway, the Bastard’s Order at Martensbridge not being slow off the mark, they promptly claimed Ruchia for themselves, and hurried her through the tutorials of a divine. In return, Learned Ruchia gave, er, extremely varied service to the Order and the Temple for the next forty years. She certainly seems to have traveled, in her duties. Which was how, when she had her fatal seizure of the heart some four years back, I came upon her on the roadside near Greenwell Town, and… here we all are.”

“How old were you?”

“Nineteen.”

Making him all of twenty-three, now. He still looked nineteen. Or, Oswyl might allow, twenty. At a stretch. “Were you some sort of precocious scholar, as a youth?”

“Not at all. I liked to read, but there weren’t many books to be had in Greenwell.”

“Yet you dashed through the learning for a divine in just four years?” It normally took six.

“Three. I came back here to the Princess-Archdivine’s service last spring. You have to realize, I—we—had already been through the training for a divine four times already. In a sense. And twice for a physician. So it was more of a refreshing. I tried to talk the seminary’s masters into granting me my rank fivefold on that basis, but they resisted my blandishments, more’s the pity.”

“I suppose… it was as if you already carried a tutor inside of you?” Which seemed like cheating, somehow.

Penric grimaced. “Mostly. Although Desdemona thought it was just hilarious never to help me out during my oral examinations. It would have been bad for you, Penric.” His brows twitched up, and his mouth, down. “Ha-ha.”

Was that last an interjection from the demon? The voice sounded faintly altered in cadence and accent from the strangely sunny young man’s usual tones.

“That was Ruchia,” Penric put in, confirming Oswyl’s guess. “Desdemona speaks with her voice a lot. I don’t know if it’s because she is the latest and freshest, er, imprint, or held the demon longest, or simply had the strongest temperament. Time may have something to do with it. The first three women are almost impossible to tell apart, and I don’t think it’s just because they shared the Cedonian language. They may be melting together with age.” He stared out over the lake, pewter gray and rippling bleakly in the chill wind blowing down from the distant mountain peaks shrouded with clouds. “Altogether, I calculated my demon is just over two hundred years old. I have noted,” he added, “that the demon-generations are getting longer, as this tale goes on. I find that heartening, myself. I sometimes wonder what my… imprint will seem like, to the next person to inherit Desdemona.”

“Your head seems very, uh, crowded,” Oswyl offered at last, into the rather blighted silence that followed this.

“Very,” said Penric. He brightened. “But at least I never lack for tales.”

“I… wait. Now which was Desdemona, again?” The question he’d started this interrogation with, Oswyl dimly recalled. He kept his fingers curled firmly on his reins.

“That’s my name for all of her together. Like a town council of ten older sisters who issue one edict. It also saves my running down several names every time I wish to address her, like my father shouting at his children.”

“I… see.” Oswyl’s brows drew down. “The sorcerer I rode with from Easthome never told me anything like this.” The dour fellow had not talked much at all, in fact.

“Perhaps his demon was younger and less developed. Perhaps he does not have a very cordial relation with it, if its prior riders were not happy men.” Penric’s lips twitched up, and his voice shifted a betraying hair. “Perhaps you never asked—Inquirer.”

Oswyl hunched his shoulders and pressed his horse into a trot. They could not reach the next town soon enough. And I am betting not only my mission, but maybe my life, upon this mad-brained sorcerer? Father of Winter, in this Your season, help me!