Penric and the Shaman

IX

Inglis used his stick to climb to his full height, although his right leg, much abused by the trip down the mountain this morning, threatened to buckle from the pain. The man before him seemed a blond apparition, inexplicable. “Go away,” Inglis tried.

The intruder just tilted his head. “Good attempt, wolf-man. A bit misdirected. Although wouldn’t ‘Give me your horse’ seem more to the point?”

How did he know…? And then, however badly his powers were crippled, Inglis recognized the fellow for what he was. And, five gods, or should that oath be Bastard’s teeth!, he was. His spirit-density was stunning. “Sorcerer.” Inglis was confounded by hope and fear. And by hurt, and heartache, and exhaustion, and his long, futile flight. “Temple, or hedge?” Or, five gods help them all, rider or ridden? Surely any demon so powerful must be ascendant? Could Inglis persuade it to…

“Temple through and through, I’m afraid. You are not more surprised than I was.” He glanced aside at Arrow, who had shifted to stand at Inglis’s right hand. “How did you come by one of Scuolla’s dogs?”

“It found me. Up on the mountain. When I was lost, trying to find a shortcut to the Carpagamo road. It won’t stop following me.” Wait, how did he know of Scuolla?

“Ah. Huh.” The blond man’s lips crooked up in a smile of… dismay? “Did it bring you here, do you think?”

“I… don’t know.” Had it? He glanced down at the big dog, his companion for days. Inglis had assumed the animal was attracted to him because he was a shaman invested, and it had somehow confused him with its prior master. Maker. “I came looking for…” He hardly knew what, anymore.

“You came looking for Acolyte Gallin, I understand. Why?”

“An old woman up at the summer grazing camp told me that he knew Scuolla. I thought he might know… something.”

“Did you know Scuolla has been dead under a rock fall for the past two months?”

“I was told that, too.”

“And did she tell you that he was a hedge shaman?”

“No. I… guessed it. From the dog.”

“Hm.” The sorcerer seemed to come to some decision. “I have a senior locator outside, who has ridden all the way from Easthome in pursuit of you. Do you surrender? No more shaman tricks, no running away?”

What could this man do if he refused? “I’m not running anywhere.” Inglis grimaced. “I mangled my leg on the mountain.”

The sorcerer looked him up and down. “Ah. I see. Yes, mountains will do that.”

Inglis hung on his staff, feeling sick. “They in Easthome seek me as a murderer?”

“Locator Oswyl is a very precise man. I’m sure he’d say he seeks you as a suspected murderer. No one is going to hang you on the spot, you know, without all those judicial ceremonies his Order is so fond of. Everyone has to dress up, first. Not to mention what could be some fraught theological complications.” He added, “I think you had better give me your knife, for now.”

“NO.”

He went on with unimpaired weird cheer, “That’s Tollin kin Boarford’s ghost wrapped in it, yes? So Oswyl was right. I shall like to know, later, how you managed that. Speaking from my calling. Both of them, come to think.”

“I’m not going to use it to stab anyone.” Inglis’s voice was hoarse. “Else.”

“Yes, but my colleagues won’t know that. Once things are more settled, I may even be able to give it back into your care. You’ve been faithful so far, haven’t you? You’ve brought it a long way.” His voice had gone soft, persuasive. Sensible. “Why?”

“I sought a shaman.”

“You are a shaman.”

Inglis vented a bitter laugh. “Not anymore.”

The blond man looked him over. Or through him? “Surely, you are.”

“I tried. I can’t. Can’t enter the trance.” His voice, rising, fell. “I think it is a punishment. Maybe from the gods.”

The sorcerer raised his eyebrows. “So why not take your problem to your shamanic superiors at court in Easthome? They were much closer.”

“I killed Tollin,” Inglis said through his teeth. “I could not go back there and face…. everyone.”

The sorcerer took a quick glance over his shoulder. Yes, there were some other men hovering outside the door. No other exits. Trapped. How?

“Oh? I was told he’d been disemboweled by a boar. Did you stab him before, or after?”

“After. It was… it was a mercy cut.” Inglis shuddered at the memory of the knife blade going in, the pressure and the give in his hand, all mixed up with his visions as he’d descended from the plane of symbolic action, exhilarated to have completed his first investiture, to have made a fierce spirit warrior in truth. Tollin’s agonized face… “He was screaming.” It was unbearable. I had to shut him up.

“He could not have survived his injuries from the boar?”

“No. Gods, no.”

“Why didn’t you go for help then?”

“It was… very confusing in that moment. He must have planted his knife in the beast’s neck even as he was being ripped open. I captured its spirit and passed it into Tollin before I came back to, back to, to the sty. To the blood.” His wolf-within had been wildly excited by the blood, nearly uncontrollable. Inglis could, he supposed, have claimed that he’d lost control of his powers in that moment. He’d considered that defense, on his long ride north. But I didn’t. Not really.

That came later.

“Came back… out of your shamanic trance?”

“Yes.”

“Did you mean to bind his spirit to your knife?”

“No! Yes… I don’t know. I don’t know how I did that.” Well, Inglis knew what he’d done. He’d been taught about the banner-carriers, hallowed Old Wealdean warriors who were charged with carrying away from the field of battle the souls of their fallen spirit-warrior comrades. And the souls of those dying but not yet dead. The fatally wounded must have included kinsmen, friends, mentors. Had those mercy cuts, to sever the soul from its body and bind it to the banner for that strange rescue, been as horrible for them as it had been for him? I think it must.

“Was this investiture Tollin’s idea, or yours?”

“His. He’d badgered me for weeks. But none of this would have happened if I hadn’t agreed to try the rite. I wanted to test my powers. And… and then there was Tolla.”

“His sister, yes? Oswyl mentioned her. I gather your courtship was not prospering. So why not use your weirding voice on her directly?”

Inglis glared at him, offended. Arrow growled.

“Nah, nah.” The sorcerer gave a dissimulating wave of his fingers. “You have a romantic heart, I see.” As Inglis glared harder, he went on, “I’m Learned Penric of Martensbridge, by the way. Temple sorcerer of the Bastard’s Order, presently serving the court of the princess-archdivine, who assigned me to this Grayjay…” He jerked his head toward the doorway.

That near-youth was a Temple divine? Yes, he had to be, to be entrusted with his demonic passenger. Beyond Learned Penric Inglis saw another man entering the temple hall. Three more clustered behind him, two armed with short swords and one with a cavalry crossbow, and following them, yet another fellow—middle-aged, shabbier, anxious.

“What kept you?” Penric, still not turning, asked of the lead man behind him. Keeping Inglis in his eye. But Penric’s sturdy hunting bow was now dangling disregarded from his hand. He slid his arrow back into his quiver.

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” said the first man. “Your inquiries seemed to be faring well.” His accent was pure Easthome. Beneath his cloak, Inglis made out gray fabric, and the glint of brass buttons. The locator. The armed three were Temple guardsmen of some sort, Inglis supposed, dressed in a mishmash of local winter woolens and bits of blue uniform.

Penric at last glanced back to the doorway. “And here is Acolyte Gallin, shepherd of this valley,” he continued, naming the older fellow, who was gaping at Inglis in inexplicable amazement. “The very man you sought. Now that you have found him, what?”

“I wanted to find what shaman in turn had cleansed Scuolla.” Inglis swallowed. “Discover if he could also free Tollin. Cleanse him so he is not sundered. We were both fools together, but Tollin does not deserve that.”

Gallin stepped forward, looking pole-axed. “I prayed for a shaman. And here you are, right here—!”

Penric, watching Inglis stare back in bewilderment, put in with a helpful air, “Scuolla has not been cleansed, because no other shaman could be found. But he is not yet sundered. I’m not sure what sustains him. I suspect he may be drawing some spiritual nourishment from his dogs.”

Inglis’s black yelp was scarcely a laugh. “Then your prayers must have been heard by the Bastard, Acolyte Gallin. To bring you a shaman who can’t work his craft…!”

The sorcerer-divine pursed his lips, as if seriously considering this jibe. “That just might be so. He is the god of murderers and outcasts, among His other gifts.” He added under his breath, “And vile humor. And rude songs.”

“I can’t cleanse anyone.” Too polluted himself by his crime…?

“Not in your current state of mind, clearly,” said the sorcerer. His tone had grown easy, friendly. Had he understood any of this? “I think…”

Everyone in the temple hall seemed to hang on his breath.

“We should all go have dinner. And get a good night’s sleep. Yes.”

Oswyl and the guardsmen stared at Penric in startled disbelief, as if he’d just proposed they all grow wings and fly to Carpagamo, or something equally bizarre.

“That sounds very sensible.” A slight quaver in Acolyte Gallin’s voice undercut this endorsement. “The sun is already gone behind the mountains.”

“Aren’t you going to magic him?” the lead guardsman asked Penric, nodding warily at Inglis. Inglis couldn’t tell if that was something he’d wanted to see, or to be far away from.

“I don’t think I need to. Do I?” Penric, smiling, held out his hand to Inglis, palm up. Waiting for him to surrender his knife, which would be surrender indeed. “By the way, how are you keeping Tollin from fading?”

For answer, Inglis mutely held up both arms, letting his sleeves fall back.

“Oh,” said Penric, quietly.

“Blood holds life even after it leaves the body,” said Inglis, his voice falling unwilled into the cadences of his teachers. His own despair added, “For a little while.”

“Mm, yes, one sees why your Darthacan ancestors were frightened of the forest magics,” murmured Penric. “It’s written that the old shamans worked some very strange effects with blood. Rather a different affair if using someone else’s blood, and not one’s own, I imagine. Theologically speaking.” His smile was unwavering.

Inglis’s weary will was not. With fumbling fingers, he picked out the rawhide ties securing his sheath to his belt, and handed the knife across. Penric touched forehead, lips, navel, groin, and spread his fingers over his heart, Daughter-Bastard-Mother-Father-Son, completing the blessing in full before taking it. Sorcerer he might be, possessed of fearsome powers, but in this moment the full-braid divine was clearly ascendant. He didn’t hold it like a weapon. He held it like a sacrament.

He sees.

Lightheaded to the point of passing out with this release from his deathly burden, Inglis fell to his knees, burying his face in the thick fur of Arrow’s neck, gasping against tears. The dog whined and tried to lick him.

From outside the temple, a woman’s voice cried, “Blood, you fool beast! Come back here this instant!”

A copper-colored dog with muddy paws rushed into the temple hall. Inglis nearly fell over as Arrow jerked away from him. For a moment, he gathered himself to break up a dog fight, but the two animals exchanged greetings with happy yips and whines, circling around to sniff each other’s nether parts. Old friends, it seemed.

And another survivor of the rock fall? The red dog was thick with spirit-density, although not nearly so much as Arrow. Halfway to being a Great Beast; doomed to be sacrificed at the end of its life into a new puppy, to continue layering up its powers. Inglis wondered if Scuolla would have made sure it was a long and happy life, by dog standards. The good natures of both beasts suggested so.

The two dogs then turned their attentions to Inglis, swarming around him, nosing and licking and nearly knocking him over again. He was surprised into an almost-laugh fending off Blood leaning up trying to taste his face.

A woman trotted into the hall and halted beside Gallin. Middle-aged, careworn, clearly his helpmate. “He broke out when I opened the door,” she wheezed.

Learned Penric, watching the play in amusement as Blood fawned on Inglis, rubbed his lips and murmured, “Take witness of the dogs, Locator?”

Oswyl just looked exasperated. “This benighted case is the strangest I ever worked on. And I’m going to have to report it all when I get home, you realize?”

Learned Penric’s blue eyes crinkled as he grinned. “You’d best pray for eloquence, then.”