Penric and the Shaman

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Inglis was surprised into a rusty laugh. It felt strange in his throat. “I said a stick, not building timber!” Though it would make fine firewood. He ruffled the dog’s head anyway. “Fetch me a thinner stick.”

  Eagerness unimpaired, Arrow bounded away again. He returned in a few minutes towing something more sapling-like. Inglis broke off the side branches and tested it. It would do for now. The snow was almost not unpleasant on his swollen, throbbing right foot. The left was out of luck. He wondered if he could beg some coverings for them. Limping slowly, he followed the sound of the voices.

  In a three-sided shelter, its open face turned to the sun, he discovered a team of women at work scraping a stretched hide. One of them was the girl Beris. The other two were older. All stopped scraping to look up and stare at Inglis, although, as the dog momentarily abandoned him to snatch a pale scrap and retreat to chew on it, the one with the gray braid spared a dispassionate, “Arrow, you fool dog. You’ll make yourself sick.” Arrow’s tail thumped unrepentantly.

  “You got up,” said Beris, bright and a bit wary. “Are you feeling better now?”

  Better than what? “A little,” Inglis managed, and, belatedly, “Thank you for your aid.”

  The middle woman said, “You were lucky to be found. Another few days, and we’d all have gone down to the valley, even the boys.” She eyed him in curiosity. “Where were you bound?”

  He wasn’t sure he could explain his confusion of mind to himself, let alone her, nor how many times he’d switched his goal from Carpagamo to Linkbeck and back. He finally settled on, vaguely, “Up the vale, but I took a wrong turn in the dark.” He extended his empurpled foot. “I was wondering if I might beg some rags to wrap my feet. My boots are impossible.”

  She made a grunt and a motion, which her companions seemed to interpret without difficulty, and levered herself up to trudge off. Gingerly, hoping he would be able to stand again without aid, Inglis lowered himself to another sawed-off chunk of tree trunk that they seemed to be using for camp chairs.

  Should he try the ‘poor scholar collecting stories’ ploy again? It had brought him this far. Arrow relieved him of his dilemma by making another raid on the skin scraps; the woman with the gray braid made a desultory begone, pest gesture at him, which he eluded.

  “That is an extraordinary dog,” Inglis began. Did either of them realize how extraordinary? Two different flavors of blank faces regarded him in return. Beris’s seemed innocent. The elder woman’s might conceal more. Try manners? He attempted a smile at her, and said, “My name is Inglis, by the way.”

  “So Beris said.”

  “And you are, Mother…?”

  “Laaxa.”

  Inglis nodded, as though he cared. Her lips quirked, as though she did. “I was told one of the men who helped bring me off the trail had the dog from his uncle, Scuolla. Can you tell me where to find him to speak to?”

  Laaxa snorted. “Where to find him, yes. Though I doubt he’ll be speaking to you.” She pointed up the valley. “He was killed in a landslide not two months back, poor old man.”

  The blighting of Inglis’s last forlorn hope was as crushingly cold as an avalanche. “Oh.” He sat in silence for a minute, too taken aback to think. He finally tried, “Was he the man who raised dogs? I was told there was such a fellow in this vale. Or did he have Arrow from someone else?” Yes, there might be one more possibility…

  “Oh, aye, it was something of his trade. His partner was supposed to have inherited them, but they were together out hunting for meat to feed the beasts. His body they managed to dig out, at least. The dogs were scattered about to whoever would have them, after. So if you’ve come seeking to buy one, you might still have a chance.”

  “Did, uh, you know Scuolla well?”

  “Only to nod to. He was no kinsman of mine. He kept to himself up the east branch.”

  He tried Beris: “Was Savo close to his uncle, do you know?”

  She shook her head. “Savo’s mother’s a lot younger than Scuolla. I don’t think they had much to do with each other even before she married and moved to her husband’s farm.”

  He wasn’t sure how to ask, Was your neighbor an illicit hedge shaman? without frightening them into silence. “Was Scuolla gossips with anybody?”

  Laaxa shrugged. “He drank with Acolyte Gallin, time to time, I think.”

  Inglis prodded, “Acolyte Gallin?”

  “He’s our Temple-man, down Linkbeck.” Laaxa waved in the general direction of the valley. Indeed, such a small village was unlikely to rate a full-braid learned divine. An acolyte would typically be made to do. “He serves the whole of the Chillbeck upper vale.”

  “So he would have conducted Scuolla’s funeral rites?”

  “Gallin buries pretty much everyone, in these parts.”

  Inglis worded his next question cautiously. “Did you hear any strange rumors about Scuolla’s funeral?”

  He’d hit something, because both women gave him sharp, closed looks.

  “Wasn’t there,” said Laaxa. “Couldn’t say. You’d have to ask Gallin.”

  Shamans came as linked chains—half shackles, half lifelines. A shaman was needed not only to culture a Great Beast, but to conduct its sacrifice into each new candidate at the commencement of his or her service. At the end of that life of service, a shaman was again needed to cleanse the comrade soul, free it of that earthly link—some said, contamination—to go on to the gods. Among the reasons for the revival of the royal shamans of the Weald, it was said, was to sustain such chains, that no soul might go sundered. Among the reasons for keeping the practices discreet and contained was to limit such risks. At his own investiture, Inglis had accepted the hazards blithely. He was anything but blithe now.

  If Scuolla had indeed been a hedge shaman, as Inglis now strongly suspected, whoever had conducted his investiture was probably long dead; with luck, readied for his last journey by Scuolla himself. So who had cleansed Scuolla in turn? And might that unknown person help Inglis in his woe? Follow the chain.

  In this high country, it was rumored, the old ways were quietly tolerated by the rural Temple hierarchies, so long as their practitioners conceded precedence and authority to the Temple, and quarter-day dues. And if the local Temple folk were not too rigidly virtuous. So was this Acolyte Gallin an enemy of the old ways, or one of the quietly tolerant? And if the latter, had he quietly helped his drinking friend’s soul along by securing the services of another hedge shaman to perform those last rites? Or at the very least known where and how, and by whom, they were brought off?

  In which case, the next link in Inglis’s chain must be to find Acolyte Gallin. Unless this new hope should prove yet another illusion, melting away like the others as his hand grasped for it… the despairing thought made him want, not for the first time, to plunge the accursed knife into his own breast, and be done with this struggle. One more try.

  Although One foot in front of the other was perhaps no longer a very useful self-exhortation. Inglis twisted around. The toy-like houses were only a couple of miles away, as a rock might plummet. Getting himself down the mountain in his current battered condition would be a much trickier problem.

  The middle-aged woman returned, her arms full of what looked to be sheepskin scraps and sticks. One of the scraps turned out to be a simple sheepskin cap, folded over fleece-inward and sewn up one side in a sort of triangle, which she plunked unceremoniously over Inglis’s head. He jerked but did not rise. “Don’t let your ears freeze, lad.” The absurd-looking object made a startlingly swift difference in his comfort.

  Two sheepskin booties, equally simple, for his other extremities followed; she knelt to fit them over his feet as though he had been a toddler. Outer boots of woven withy and rawhide looked crude but proved clever. He suspected they would grip the snow, though he doubted they’d stand up to a long march. Neither would he, just now. He swallowed a yelp as she tied the rawhide strips on the right foot. “Aye, you’ve done yourself good, the
re.”

  The scraping finished, the three women undid the hide from its clamps and folded it over. Beris rose to stow it away—in a wooden sledge, tucked up in the corner of the shelter. That was how they transported their high-country produce down to the valley, Inglis supposed. Curing a sledge-load of such hides would keep a village worker busy all winter. Could it also transport a half-crippled man?

  They couldn’t want him to linger here, eating their reserves. It was late for losing him in a crevice. Foisting him on the charity of the village temple must surely seem a better plan.

  Inglis wriggled his feet in his sheepskin slippers. “I would pay you, ladies, but I’m afraid someone took my purse.”

  Beris looked surprised; the middle-aged woman disappointed; Laaxa Graybraid, displeased, but “Hm,” was all she said.

  “I suspect he still has it, tucked away somewhere.” Inglis’s memories were too muddled to be sure of identifying the cutpurse by his voice alone, and anyway, whichever of his three rescuers had pocketed it, they had all watched him do so. But there was no way for the thief to spend coins up here, apart from losing them to his friends at dice. “There wasn’t much left in it, but enough, I think, to pay for a ride down to Linkbeck.” He lifted his hand to indicate the sledge. “With no questions asked.” And none answered.

  A little silence, while they all took this in.

  Laaxa vented a pained sigh. “Those boys. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you, Mother Laaxa.”

  Arrow, who had stealthily acquired a belly full of hide scrapings, now proceeded to divert his watchers by vomiting them back up again, in a loud and rhythmic paroxysm.

  “Eew,” said Beris.

  “Dogs,” sighed the middle-aged woman.

  “You going to take that dog?” Laaxa asked Inglis, with a twitch of her gray eyebrows.

  “I expect… that will be up to the dog,” Inglis replied carefully.

  They stared at Arrow, now sniffing his production with evident fascination. Beris hurried to shoo him off, and toss dirt and snow over the slimy pile before he could eat it again.

  “Aye,” said Laaxa, biting her lip. “I expect so.”

  VII

  The day’s ride was slowed by several stops at likely places to inquire after their quarry, all frustratingly fruitless. But it brought Oswyl’s troop at length to the village where the local road split off to the valley of the Chillbeck. At the inn there, at last, Oswyl found report of a silent, dark-haired stranger who had spent the night and headed off into the hills, not four days ago. But also of a couple of parties making one final try for the main road north, and one whose destination was the last town within the hinterland’s borders.

  After a brief debate with the sergeant and the sorcerer, Oswyl made the decision to send two men up the main road tomorrow with strict instructions, if they found the fugitive, not to approach the dangerous man, but to set one guard to follow him and the other to double back and collect their forces. It wasn’t a compromise that delighted him in any way, but no one could sensibly go farther this afternoon, with darkness impending and the horses due a rest. Oswyl gritted his teeth in endurance, and made plans to use the evening inquiring of everyone there on the nature of the country roundabout.

  A little later, he tracked his sorcerer out to the field behind the inn, where the man had taken it into his strange head to seize the last light and indulge in a stint of archery. It was not a skill in which town-bred Oswyl had much experience, and he watched with reluctant respect as Penric put a dozen arrows into a distant straw bundle, then sent the inn’s potboy off to collect them.

  “Out of practice.” Penric frowned at the straw man, at this range now resembling a pincushion, and shook out his bare hands in turn.

  “They all hit,” observed Oswyl.

  Penric rolled his eyes. “Of course they did. The target is standing still. If this is to turn into a hunting party in the hills, I need to do better.”

  “Have you hunted much?”

  “In my youth.” He delivered this as if his youth had been a half-century ago.

  The potboy returned with the arrows, and Penric inquired of Oswyl, lifting his weapon in tentative invitation, “How are you with a bow?”

  Not good enough to make a fool of himself in front of this fellow. “I’ve not had much chance to handle one.”

  “What, did your father never take you out hunting?”

  “My father is an Easthome lawyer. He never passes the city gates if he can help it.” Oswyl offered instead, in pointless defense, “I have some training with the short sword.”

  “Huh.” Penric looked nonplussed, as if the very concept of a father who did not dash around in the woods slaughtering animals personally was a novelty. “We didn’t hunt for sport, mind you. We needed the game for our table.”

  Oswyl allowed himself a trace of amusement. “Poaching?”

  “Er, no, they were all our lands. My father was Baron kin Jurald. My eldest brother is, now.”

  “Oh.” That was a surprise. It was wrong, of course, to assume that every person of the Bastard’s Order was a bastard or an orphan, or some other odd thing. But it was true often enough. Though this Penric might be one of those acknowledged by-blows with which lords littered the world. Hesitant to pursue that rude curiosity, Oswyl substituted, “How came a kin honorific to be attached to a Darthacan name?” The sorcerer’s light coloration made him look entirely a creature of this craggy country.

  Penric shrugged. “Some last kin land-heiress met a younger son with few prospects back home in Saone, some generations ago. His dowry didn’t last, but the name and the land did.” He broke off to send the dozen retrieved arrows flying back into the distant target.

  Oswyl wondered if this connection with the minor nobility would give the sorcerer added insight into their outlaw. As the countryside deepened, the palace clerk seemed to be dropping away, to be replaced by… what? Did Penric consider himself a kin warrior, or at least half a one?

  Penric might have been entertaining some similar speculation, for as the potboy trotted off again, he asked, “How much of a countryman is our murderer, do you know? Or was he also one of those men who doesn’t pass the city gates?” He narrowed his gaze at the peaks that were catching and reflecting the last high light, looming much larger and closer now than back at Martensbridge.

  A reasonable question. The great kin lords had town mansions, as well as distant lands like little realms. Increasingly, they also kept more convenient country estates around the capital, such as the kin Boarford manor where all this disaster had started. “I believe he grew up somewhere on the south slopes of the Raven Range, though he’s been living with kinsmen in Easthome in late years.”

  “Hm. I was rather hoping for a city mouse, out of his reckoning in the hills. No such luck for us. A city wolf? Seems a bit contradictory.” He glanced at Oswyl. “Or maybe not.”

  Oswyl had no idea how to respond to that. “Have you ever hunted wolves?”

  “A few times, when they came down out of the hills in a starving season.”

  “Winters like this?”

  “Oddly, not so much. Winter is a bad time for the grazers and browsers, weakening them, but for that very reason an easier one for the fanglings that hunt them.”

  “Did you get them? Your wolves?”

  “Oh, yes. We made rugs of the skins.”

  Penric changed his stance, kneeling, moving, turning, as he sent the next flight of arrows on its way. One missed, and he muttered an oath. “I’d have won a cuff on my ear for that one.”

  “Your father’s love?” Oswyl asked dryly.

  “Eh, or Old Fehn, his huntsman. Who’d trained Father. They were pleased to take turns on my ears. Both very keen on taking down the quarry with a first killing shot, if possible. I thought at first it was pious mercy to the Son of Autumn’s beasts, but eventually figured out no one wanted to chase all over after a wounded one. Not even me, after I’d tried it a few times.”
r />   The foot-weary potboy trudged back, handing over the arrows with a poorly concealed sigh. Penric took his stance and raised his bow once more.

  The straw target burst into flames.

  The potboy gave a startled yelp. Oswyl jerked back.

  Penric merely looked miffed. “Oh, for—! Des, we don’t set game on fire!” He lowered his bow and glowered at the licking orange flicker, merrily glowing in the gloaming.

  “What was that?” Oswyl kept his voice level and didn’t let it come out a squeal, barely.

  “Desdemona thinks my hunting skills are inefficient. Also, she is bored and wants to go in.” He sighed and returned his unloosed arrow to its quiver. His mouth opened and vented a voiceless laugh. He added, peevishly, “I don’t know how Ruchia put up with you, really, I don’t.”

  Penric pulled his purse off his belt, dug into it, and handed over a coin to the potboy, now quivering like a restless pony. “Practice over. Off you go.” The boy absconded the instant his fingers closed over his payment, looking worriedly back over his shoulder a couple of times in his hasty retreat to the inn yard.

  Oswyl wondered to what god he should be praying for luck in his chase. Not that any god had ever answered his pleas, whether on his knees by his bed as a boy, or prone in the Temple as a man. He stared glumly at the sorcerer’s braided blond queue, pale in the growing shadows, as the man unstrung his bow and reordered his gear, then followed him back inside.

  * * *

  The village of Linkbeck lay high up its vale, past what seemed to Oswyl’s Wealdean eye impoverished farms, tending to rocky, tilted pastures rather than grain fields. The cows were fat enough, though, the barns big and solid in fieldstone and dark-stained timber, the houses in a like style, with pale stones scattered over their wood-shingled roofs. The excessively tall mountains loured over all, winter white at their tops, while the valley road was still sodden with autumn mud beneath a crunching, frozen crust. The aspiring river ran green and foaming beneath the wooden span that gave the settlement its name.