Penric and the Shaman

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  No. He eyed the great dog, its furry triangular ears pricked as it tracked the progress of the meat strips to his mouth. A certainty. “That dog. Who owns it?”

  “Arrow is Savo’s beast,” said Beris. “Had him from his uncle Scuolla this past autumn.”

  The dog lay down on its belly, wriggled up to Inglis, and shoved its head under his left hand. No pup, but a full-grown animal, mature—middle-aged and dignified, after a fashion. Absently, Inglis scratched it behind the ears. Tail thumping, it whined and licked at his bloodied arm.

  “He seems to think he’s your dog, now,” said Bern, watching this play through narrowed eyes. “Hasn’t left your side since we brought you in. Why is that—traveler?”

  “Was Savo with you when you found me?”

  “Aye, we’d gone out hoping for red deer. I’m not sure you were a fair trade, since we can’t skin or eat you.”

  They’d seemed willing enough to skin him; Inglis trusted they would have stopped short of the eating, yes. But there had been no shaman among the hunters, or they would surely have recognized each other, and this conversation would be very different. So, not Savo.

  “That knife,” said the brother, Bern, looking at him sideways. “Are those real jewels? I bet Churr not.”

  Inglis had never imagined they might not be real. He drew out the knife and stared at it. The slim eight-inch blade was hafted in walrus ivory; he could feel the echo of old life in it when he held it in his hand. The beautifully curving hilt widened to an oval at the end, capped with gold, flat face holding small garnets, one gone missing in some past time and not replaced. They encircled a cabochon-cut red stone he guessed might be a ruby. Tooth and blood, how fitting. His blood on the steel had darkened and dried already, its life sucked in as ravenously as he’d just wolfed down hard bread and cheese. He set about rubbing off the residue on his trouser leg. “I suppose so. It was an heirloom.”

  The silence in the room grew a shade tighter. He glanced up to find a disquieting stew of curiosity, avarice, and fear simmering in his watchers’ faces. But… they had brought him in off the mountain, and given him food and drink. He owed them warning.

  “Why do you, uh, give it your blood?” asked Beris warily. “Is it, that is, do you think it’s a magic knife?”

  Inglis considered the impossibly complicated truth, and the need to quash that avarice before it created trouble—more trouble—and finally settled on, “It is accursed.”

  Bern drew breath through his teeth, half daunted, half dubious.

  Beris’s gaze tracked up and down the scabs on his arms. “Couldn’t you feed it, I don’t know, animal blood?”

  “No. It has to be mine.”

  “Why?”

  His lips drew back in something not much like a smile. “I’m accursed, too.”

  The pair excused themselves rather swiftly, after that. But they left the food and barley water. Arrow declined to follow, though invited with an open door, soft calls, chirps, a whistle, and firm commands. Bern circled back as if to grab the dog by its ruff and drag him, but, at Arrow’s lowered head and glower, thought better of the plan. The door closed behind them.

  Like most people, they underestimated the keenness of Inglis’s hearing.

  “What do you make of him now?” asked Beris, pausing a few paces beyond the hut.

  “I don’t know. He talks like a Wealdman. I think he must be out of his head.”

  “He wasn’t very feverish. Do you think he might be uncanny? Dangerous?”

  “Mm, maybe not to us, the shape he’s in right now. Perhaps to himself. Churr could inherit that knife he coveted so much after all, if he goes from chopping up his arms to cutting his own throat.”

  “Why would a fellow do such a thing?”

  “Well, mad.” (Inglis could hear the shrug.)

  “His voice was very compelling, did you feel it? It gave me the shivers.”

  “Mother and Daughter, Beris, don’t be such a girl.” But the mockery was tinged with unease.

  “I am a girl.” A considering pause. “He might be handsome, if he smiled.”

  “Don’t let Savo hear you say that. He’s already annoyed enough about his dog.”

  “I am not Savo’s dog.”

  Siblings indeed, for then he barked at her, and she hit him, and their squabbling voices faded out of even Inglis’s earshot.

  He coaxed the dog up under his arm with a bribe of smoked meat. Hugged him in, stared into the clear brown eyes, then closed his own and tried to sense. The animal’s spirit-density was almost palpable, hovering just beyond his present crippled reach. How many generations of dogs were poured into this Dog? Five? Ten? More than ten? How many generations of men had cultivated it? This could be a dog to make a shaman, immensely valuable.

  And who was Scuolla, to give such a treasure away? Was the man an illicit hedge shaman, had he made Arrow? Intended this nephew Savo for his secret apprentice? Or was he unknowing of what he’d possessed? Horrifying, that he might be unknowing.

  Appalling hope, that he might be wise.

  “As soon as I’m on my feet,” he told the dog with a little shake, “let’s go find this ungrateful old master of yours, eh?”

  Arrow yawned hugely, treating Inglis to a waft of warm dog-breath entirely lacking in enchantment, and rolled over like a bolster against Inglis’s side.

  V

  Penric’s party came to the town of Whippoorwill, at the head of the lake, in the early winter dusk. It was half the size of the more successful Martensbridge, and a bit resentful of the fact, but still fivefold larger than Greenwell Town of Penric’s youth. Even the anxious Grayjay made no suggestion that they press on any farther this night. At the local chapter of the Daughter’s Order, which lay under the princess-archdivine’s direct rule, they found crowded, but free, lodgings.

  Then Oswyl made the first practical use of the troop that had trailed them by sending them all out, severally, to ask after their quarry in the inns and taverns of the town. He didn’t mention brothels aloud; Penric was unsure if they were tacitly implied, if he thought the fleeing murderer would make no use of them, or if he was simply respectful of the guardsmen’s oaths to the Daughter’s Order. All business in Whippoorwill was settling down to merely local traffic as the high roads to the northern coast countries closed off for the season.

  Penric and Oswyl had just finished eating at the tavern of their choice where, alas, no one remembered a dark-haired and dark-eyed Wealdean heading north alone in the past week, though any sensible fellow attempting the passes this late might have joined one of several parties and who would have noticed him then? Oswyl was rubbing his eyes in pain at this prospect when one of the guardsmen, Baar, came back. “I think I may have found something, sirs…”

  With open relief but guarded hope, Oswyl followed at his heels down the streets, Penric trailing, to a lesser inn just off the main north road. Its air was homey and shabby, and it mainly served frugal local countrymen.

  “Oh, aye,” said the tapster, when Oswyl had lubricated the man’s tongue with a pint of his own ale, and his purse with three more all around for their company. “Don’t know if he’s the man you seek, but certainly a well-set-up young fellow with dark hair and eyes. That describes half the Darthacans on the roads—”

  Oswyl nodded rueful agreement.

  “—but this one spoke with a Wealdean accent, and not lowborn. I thought he must be a scholar, because he said he wanted tales, as he was writing a book. Collecting them, see.”

  Oswyl’s eyebrows went up. “What sort of book?”

  “Old tales of the mountains, uncanny ones. Campfire tales, children’s stories, ghost stories. Not saints’ legends, much. He was especially interested in tales of magical beasts.”

  “Did he get any from you?” asked Penric.

  “Oh, aye! It was a busy night.” The tapster looked around mournfully at his current near-empty premises. “After he bought a round or two, I think he might have got enough for half his book
right here.”

  “Did he seem especially intent about any particular tales? Ask more questions?”

  “He seemed quite pleased to get the fellows going on about rumors of uncanny animals being bred up in the high valleys.”

  Penric came more alert. “Do you mean, um, current rumors, not just old stories? What are they?”

  “Well, there’s supposed to be a man up the Chillbeck who raises specially smart dogs, very prized by the local shepherds and hunters. I’ve met some right smart mountain dogs, though, so’s I don’t know as there’s anything more to it than tales and bragging.”

  “Did he say anything about following those rumors to their source?” asked Pen.

  “No, can’t say as he did. He didn’t say much about himself, come to think. Contented just to listen, y’know.”

  Oswyl put in, “Did he ask much about Carpagamo, Adria, the passes? Anything about how to get to the north coast?”

  “A man hardly needs to ask about the passes this time of year—folks scarce talk about anything else, always hoping for a late thaw and one last chance to get through. But no, I don’t recollect as he did. He seemed tired. Went up to bed soon after.”

  “Did you see which way he went in the morning?” asked Oswyl.

  “No, sir, sorry. Mornings are a busy time, getting everyone out. He went off afoot, though. No horse for him. That’s why I thought, poor scholar, despite the kin-rich mouth.”

  Penric blinked. “You have a good ear for accents.”

  “Well, sir, we get a lot of travelers through, at least come summer, and they do tell their tales. Gives a man practice.”

  Oswyl sat back, frowning, although not at anyone here. “How many nights ago was this, again? Try to be sure.”

  The tapster, brows crooked with concentration, counted up on his thick fingers. “Six nights, sir. I remember because it was the evening of the horse-market day, and we had a lot of folks in from the country round for that.”

  Oswyl gave a grunt of satisfaction, drained his tankard, and rose. “Thank you. The Father of Winter’s blessing upon this house, in His season impending.”

  “Go with the gods, sirs.”

  Learned divine though he now was, Penric did not add the Bastard’s blessing, first because most people didn’t appreciate the ambiguity, and second because he was incognito for the evening’s scouting. And, third, ever since he had once met the god immanent—as close as his arm’s reach but not, surely, anything to dare touch—he wasn’t exactly comfortable pledging His word. It might not prove to be a safely hollow courtesy.

  The Daughter’s guard paced before them with a lantern as they made their way back along the dark streets to the Order’s house. Penric ventured, “It sounds as if a foray up the valley of the Chillbeck might be worth the time.”

  Oswyl snorted. “Have you looked at a map? That valley has no good pass out of it to the north. And there are a dozen more just like it. It would be like plunging into a gigantic stone maze.”

  “It’s not so different from my home country, just a hundred miles east of here.”

  Oswyl eyed him dubiously. “There will be more people on the main road.”

  “Strangers stand out more in the vales. People notice them. And besides, if that tapster spoke true, you’ve made up a few days on Inglis’s lead since the Crow.”

  “Time I do not care to waste by haring off up blind alleys.”

  “Unless the blind alley turns out to be a hunter’s bag.”

  “Hm.” Oswyl paused and stared to the north where the high peaks glimmered in the night, a pale wall across the world. “I believe I was right to hold to my reasoning back on the Crow Road. I’d wager that stout Easthome sorcerer is saddle-sore and empty-handed now, somewhere in Saone.” The vision seemed to give him a certain understandable satisfaction. “Why should I think your advice better?”

  Oddly, Penric didn’t sense that the question was rhetorical. “Because this is my home country, not his? Because why would Inglis, if the man was Inglis, ask all those questions and not pursue the pointers they gained him? Because Inglis, being a stranger here, will try the most easily reached routes first?”

  “Time,” said Oswyl, though his teeth.

  “Is it so desperate? He is no less or more trapped by the snow on the passes than he would be by Chillbeck Vale. It’s not as though he’s been leaving a trail of bodies.”

  Oswyl was surprised into a noise that came as close to a laugh, if a black one, as Penric had yet heard from him. “I suppose I should not wish it.”

  An oil lantern hung over the Order’s gates, its yellow light glittering from the snow sifted in between the street’s cobbles. Oswyl motioned Baar ahead of them into the warm, with a clap to his shoulder and a low-voiced, “Well done, man.” But he did not at once follow, and Penric paused with him.

  “As a Temple sensitive, have you ever gone out, or been taken out, to check accusations of hedge sorcery?” Oswyl asked abruptly.

  Penric, curious at this sudden turn in the talk, folded his arms against the night chill and replied, “Three times, when I was at seminary at Rosehall, I was taken along for training. Not for the working of the thing, since any sorcerer recognizes another as readily as I can tell you are a tall man, but to get a grasp on the legalities, which can become complex. For one thing, just because the accused is not a sorcerer, and they almost never are, it doesn’t necessarily mean no crime has been committed, by other means or persons. I did think the false accusations, if the accuser knew them false, to be especially heinous.”

  Oswyl nodded grimly.

  “I’ve not been sent out since I was made court sorcerer, as Tigney has others to call on for such routine duties. But Desdemona, after she became a Temple demon, went with her riders on hundreds of such inquiries, and found a real sorcerer involved, what—”

  Twice.

  “Only twice.”

  “As a locator, I’ve seen the same from the other side,” said Oswyl. “In ten years, only a single case sustained, and the poor man, who’d thought he was going mad, flung himself upon the Temple’s mercy and found it. But one time…”

  He hesitated so long, Penric nearly prodded him with a, But one time…? except that Desdemona quietly advised, Wait.

  Oswyl glowered down the street at nothing, and finally said, “One time, we were laggard on the road. The reasons seemed sufficient—bad weather, a bridge washed out. Howsoever. We arrived at this dismal village out in the country to discover the accused woman had been burned to death by her frenzied neighbors the night before. No sign found that any demon had jumped from her pyre. She was almost certainly innocent, and if we had arrived timely, we could have disposed of the false charges forthwith, and given stern warnings to the slanderers. As it was, we faced the dilemma of trying to charge an entire village with murder. It all broke down in a sickening morass, and in the end… well, no justice was done there, in the Father’s sight or any other.”

  While Penric, taken wholly aback, was still trying to come up with something to acknowledge this that didn’t sound fatuous, Oswyl yanked open the door and made to step within. But as he did he growled over his shoulder, “So I do not like being late.”

  The door thudded shut like the end of an argument.

  After a moment, Penric sighed and reached for the handle. This isn’t going to be so easy, is it?

  The Father’s cases seldom are, noted Desdemona. Else they wouldn’t need Him.

  They rode out of Whippoorwill very early the next morning.

  VI

  Twenty-seven.

  Inglis controlled his pained panting, and stropped the knife blade carefully over the shallow cut across his right thigh. When it was well-coated, he set it aside and scrambled around in his fur nest to pull up and tie his trouser strings. He’d found the rest of his clothes in a pile near the hearth; his purse had been unsurprisingly missing. Left boot also there, right boot ruined, cut down the shaft. If it had come off, presumably it could come back on… no. He
sighed and abandoned them both.

  It took three tries to wallow upright. Arrow sat up and watched with interest. As Inglis hobbled barefoot the short distance across the hut, the dog rose and paced along. Inglis’s hand found its ruff, sturdy but not quite high enough for good support. The wooden door, secured only by a rope latch, creaked wide. He leaned on the jamb and looked around.

  The morning sun was blindingly bright on the snow, which was turning slushy in some late teasing thaw, and Inglis’s eyes watered. Blinking, he found that the hut was nearly at the tree line. Dark firs and pines fell away below; he could see over their tops down into the vale. The flat valley floor narrowed here, the last farms straggling up its crooked, attenuating length. A small village clustered around a timber bridge over the barely-a-river.

  A few more crude huts clung to the slope near Inglis’s refuge. One was plainly a smokehouse, from the aromatic haze rising through its thatch. A nanny goat with a bell hung from a leather strap around its neck wandered past, ignoring him. From somewhere nearby, he heard women’s voices.

  He stared down at Arrow, who gazed back, soulfully attentive. It was worth a try… He caressed the dog’s head, and said, “Fetch me a stick.”

  The dog made a cheerful noise in its chest, too deep to be a yip, and bounded away. By the time Inglis had retrieved, cleaned, and sheathed his knife, and determined that no more belongings of his were in the hut, Arrow returned to the doorway, dragging a log as long and thick as a fencepost. He dropped it with a thunk at Inglis’s feet and looked up proudly, toothy grin gaping, tail swishing back and forth like a cudgel.