Penric's Demon

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He walked all the way around it, marveling at its size and stately proportions, then peeked through the tall pillared portico. No ceremonies seemed to be in progress, and other lone worshipers were trickling in and out, so Pen ventured within. As the space opened up before him, he realized that the old wooden Greenwell temple was a mere hall by comparison, despite its abundant woodcarvings. Or maybe a barn.

  The holy fire on the central granite plinth had a round copper hood and chimney, made rich with delicate hammered designs, to carry the smoke out of the worshipers’ eyes, with the result that the domed roof was not smoke-blackened. A ring of arched windows below the dome let in light. The space was six-sided, one for the broad entryway and one for each of the five gods, opening to domed apses that must, could one see the temple from the top, make it look like a grand stone flower.

  The niche for the Lady of Spring, whose season this now was, was redolent with offerings of fresh blooms. A few serious-looking townsmen were praying in the niche of the Father of Winter, god of, among other things, justice. Judges, lawyers? More likely litigants, Pen decided. An impressively pregnant woman knelt on a cushion before the altar of the Mother of Summer, praying perhaps for a safe delivery, or possibly just for the strength to stand up again. The Bastard’s niche, between the Daughter’s and the Mother’s, was presently empty.

  Pen went by habit to the altar of the Son of Autumn. Only two fellows were there before him. The younger man, looking like a military recruit, knelt on one of the provided cushions, his hands up, palms out and fingers spread. Praying for luck? An older man lay prone on one of the large prayer rugs, arms out, hands clenching, in the attitude of deepest supplication. It was mere fancy that Pen imagined him a veteran, praying for forgiveness, but he couldn’t shake off the impression.

  He picked out a cushion behind them and got down onto his knees without quite knowing what he was praying for. Or should be praying for. Or even Who he should be praying to. So he prayed for the safety and well-being of his family, and of all on the Jurald lands, and poor half-cheated Preita as, he was reminded, he had promised to do. Ruchia? Hardly the right god. He signed the tally, rose, and carried his knee cushion over to the Bastard’s niche.

  Kneeling again, he realized he’d forgotten to pray for himself. How temporary was the transfer of his affairs to this new god? The Bastard was the master of disasters; supplicants more often prayed to avert His attentions, like paying a mercenary company to route around one’s town.

  Would praying for knowledge be safe? Pen was certainly desperate for it. But the white god was the author of some pretty vicious ironies, as far as the prophecy-stories associated with His gifts told. Praying for the soul of Ruchia seemed late off the mark, as she was signed by her funeral miracle to be in His hands already. Pen contented himself with hoping she was happy there, whatever that meant in that profoundly altered state beyond death.

  On impulse, Pen decided to pray for Desdemona. Granted, demons were already creatures of the god, though whether escaped prisoners or servants seemed unclear. Maybe they could be either, as one man might be good and another bad, or a man might go from bad to good or the reverse at different times of his life? He became aware that she had grown very quiet, like a tight, closed ball inside of him.

  Demons, unkillable and, it appeared, immune to pain, did not fear much, but they feared their god, and the dissolution they would suffer if they fell back into His hands. Pen would too, he decided, if going to the gods meant his destruction and not his preservation. However it was that souls were sustained in the hands of their chosen gods. Or choosing gods.

  Praying for her safety and well-being must cover it, since neither were possible without that substrate of continuing existence. A well-practiced prayer that he knew how to do. So he did, whispering the words aloud.

  In all, he was relieved that no one answered.

  He unfolded himself and went back to the portico, pausing a moment to take in the view up the lake. He wondered if that distant gray smudge sticking out into the water from the left shore might be Clee’s castle birthplace—not on a crag, for a change, but using a small island to provide it with a free moat.

  Uncertain which of the descending avenues to take back to the Order’s house, Pen called softly, “Desdemona . . . ?”

  No answer. She seemed still locked up inside him. Pen wondered if the gods really were more present in their temples, for all that the divines taught that They were always equally present everywhere. And if demons would know. Pen pursed his lips, then slipped into a silk mercer’s shop at the top of one street.

  Most of the goods displayed were far beyond his means, but he negotiated for a bit of ribbon about the length of his arm without doing his little stock of coins too much damage. He found the mirror provided for customers to hold the cloth up to their faces, and braided the blue silk band through his queue. He turned his head and waited.

  “Pretty!” murmured Desdemona.

  Aha, that’s fetched her out. He must keep that trick in mind. He said only “Thank you,” and went back to the street, where he was then able to ask himself for directions. No wonder sorcerers have a reputation for being strange. That silent speech, if he ever gained the knack of it, would be a great convenience. Swinging his bundle of new old clothes, he started off.

  A couple of housemaids giggled and blushed as he strode by, which Pen ignored. A glum and elderly washerwoman, shuffling along, looked up, and her wrinkled face broke into so unexpectedly sweet a smile that Pen had to smile back, and offer her a little bow. A shave and a hair wash worked on women of all sorts, it seemed. Which, since Desdemona might well be described as women of all sorts, was . . . opportune.

  Turning down the steep street fronting the Order’s house, he saw Clee walking up it accompanied by a tall, black-bearded, soldierly fellow leading his horse. Pen finally saw what the term richly caparisoned meant, for it was a very well-dressed horse: saddle and bridle carved and stained and set with silver; its saddle blanket, admittedly atop a more practical sheepskin, of embroidered silk. He thought of Desdemona’s horse lecture, and was amused.

  Two mounted guardsmen and a groom followed, reins slack. The bearded fellow bore a sword, in a town where very few men carried them, and a jeweled band on his hat.

  Not much apart from the near-identical color and cut of their hair marked the two men as related. Clee was lanky, his hands thin and ink-stained, his clothing a knee-length townsman’s gown with trousers in a simple cut and fabric. His companion was thickset and muscular, his hands broad, suitable for maintaining a grip on a weapon in defiance of blows, his riding leathers heavy and less elaborate than what his horse was wearing. Pen suspected the straight black hair had actually borne a helmet at some point. Tough, solid, unsmiling.

  Clee looked up and saw Penric, and his head went back in surprise; after a moment, he beckoned Pen nearer. The pair stopped to let him come up.

  “Penric! I would like you to meet my brother, Lord Rusillin kin Martenden. Rusi, this is our visitor, Lord Penric kin Jurald, from the valley of Greenwell.”

  Lord Rusillin spread his hand over his heart in the courteous gesture of a comrade of the Son, and offered Pen a reserved nod. Pen smiled and nodded back, though he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch his lips in the sign of the Bastard. “Five gods give you good day, my lord.”

  The carved mouth made an effort at a smile. “Lord Penric. One god is giving you a difficult time, by what my brother tells me.”

  Clee had gossiped about his condition? Pen supposed it was unusual, and therefore interesting. He couldn’t think Learned Tigney would like that. But then, very few people were as determinedly uninformative as Tigney. Pen managed, “So far, I have taken no harm from my accident. And it’s won me a trip to Martensbridge at the Temple’s expense, which I cannot fault.”

  The smile grew more genuine. “You should join a mercenary company if you really want to see the world.”

  Was Rusillin recruiting? That was one way
for a lord to maintain his estate, certainly. “My brother Drovo did that,” said Pen.

  “Good for him!”

  Affability did not seem to come easily to the man, but Pen sensed he was trying. He therefore let this go by, struggling to remember what all he’d said to Clee about Drovo. By Clee’s lack of a wince, Pen hadn’t got round to mentioning his brother’s final fate, ah, that was right.

  “Rusi collects and leads a company of men for the Earl Palatine of Westria,” said Clee, confirming Pen’s guess.

  “A mercenary company that could find good uses for a sorcerer,” Lord Rusillin remarked, “though the Temple does not often release theirs to such services. The sorcerer might find such tasks profitable as well.”

  Pen cleared his throat. “I’m neither a sorcerer nor Temple-sworn, at present. Or only an infant sorcerer. I acquired my demon less than a fortnight ago, and they are much weakened for a time by such transitions, I’ve learned. And I’ve had no training at all. So I’m afraid I’m not much use to anyone, just yet.”

  “Hm. There’s a shame.” Rusillin gave him a kindly look, or perhaps it was pity.

  “Well,” said Pen, extricating himself before Clee’s brother could start in on any more direct military propositioning, “I should report in to Learned Tigney. He’ll be wondering where I went. Honored to meet you, my Lord Rusillin.”

  “And you, Lord Penric.”

  He watched Pen keenly as he went inside, bending his head to make some remark to Clee that Pen did not hear, though Clee’s lips twitched. Pen was pleased that the two half-brothers seemed to have a reasonably fraternal relationship despite their differences in estate. There was certainly plenty to tempt Clee to envy, were he inclined to it.

  He wondered if Desdemona had found Rusillin’s powerful figure impressive.

  Pen went upstairs and settled with Tigney who, remarking sternly on his lateness, received as strict an accounting of Pen’s time as of his coins.

  “Desdemona seemed to like the bathhouse,” Pen told him. “I hadn’t known creatures of spirit could partake of pleasures of the body quite so simply.”

  Tigney’s lips thinned in his beard. “So dangerously, if the demon becomes ascendant. They devolve into fascination and excess, with no thought for preservation. As a man might ride a stolen horse to death.”

  Controlling a wicked impulse to whinny, Pen excused himself to put his new treasures away and return to his station in the library.

  * * *

  The following afternoon, Pen had grown so absorbed in a Darthacan chronicle of Great Audar that he almost missed his chance.

  The librarian had gone out, but a scribe and two acolytes were still working. They left one by one as Pen was perusing an account of the massacre at Holytree that seemed vastly different than one he had read from a Wealdean writer. He only looked up when Desdemona, with some effort, made his mouth say, “Hey!”

  “What?”

  “Now’s your moment. To the cabinet.”

  Pen set his volume down and hurried over to it. “Wait. It’s still locked.” He wasn’t going to try to force it; the lock was sturdy, the woodwork was fine, and the destruction would be obvious.

  “Put your hand on the lock.”

  Baffled, Pen did so. A surge of heat seemed to flow from his palm. Within the metal mechanism, something clicked.

  “Could you always do that?” he asked.

  “Not for the first few days.” He had the sense of a convalescent tottering happily around a room after too long abed, delighted to be working weakened muscles again.

  “But . . . Tigney must know. Hasn’t he told the librarian?”

  “To be sure, which is why you have never been left alone here. This oversight will not last. So hasten.”

  Willingly, Pen did so. The cabinet door creaked wide.

  The contents were slightly disappointing; a mere two shelves of volumes, less than forty in all, the other two shelves bare. Nothing sparkled or growled or seemed to need to be chained like a vicious dog. His hands reached out eagerly. “Which one?”

  “Not that, no, no . . . that one.”

  “It’s not the thickest.”

  “No, but it’s the best. Three-fourths of what’s here is rubbish. Now close up. She’s coming back.”

  Pen swung the door shut; the latch clicked. He set his hand to it. “And lock up again?”

  “We can’t do that.”

  “Wait, why not?”

  “Locking increases order. Too advanced for you right now.”

  The disorder that would result if the librarian thought to check the lock was a bit frightening to contemplate, if one wasn’t a durable demon. Pen scurried back to his bench, shoved the filched volume into his tunic, and opened his Darthacan chronicle once more. The words seemed to dance before his eyes, and the volume tucked under his heart to burn. Footsteps sounded from the hall.

  “Don’t leave right away,” muttered Desdemona, “and don’t make a show of it, or offer limping explanations. Go out exactly as you always do.”

  To Pen’s relief, the first one back was the scribe, who gave Pen a cordial nod and took up her quill again. The librarian, returning a few minutes later, looked around as if satisfied and went to her desk, where she took up a perpetual copying task that she fitted in between other duties, much like a woman with her knitting. Pen read two more pages without taking in a word, then rose, tucked the parchment slip with his name on it into the page where he’d stopped, and set the volume on the librarian’s desk with his usual “Thank you.”

  She nodded back, with a mildly approving look, and Pen made his escape.

  Unsure where else to hide, Pen went back to Clee’s room; to his relief, the dedicat was out. He closed the door, set a chair in front of it to slow anyone entering, jounced down on his bed, and opened the stolen book. Borrowed book. It wasn’t as though he meant to take it out of the house. And he certainly meant to put it back. Undetected, by preference.

  Essentials of Sorcery and the Management of Demons, the title page read. The Work of Learned Ruchia of Martensbridge, Senior Divine and Sorceress of the Bastard’s Order. With Aid from Learned Helvia of Liest and Learned Amberein of Saone. Volume One.

  “Hey,” said Pen, indignant. “You wrote this!”

  “Not we,” sighed Desdemona. “Ruchia’s doings. We would not have had the patience. And a tedious great deal of work it was, too. We threatened to throw her off a bridge, once, if she would not finish it up and be done.”

  Distracted by this, Pen found his next sentence jammed up in his mouth. When he had untangled his tongue, he asked instead, “Could you have?”

  “No,” sighed Desdemona. “Not her. Neither from a bridge nor from our being.” She added after a little, “Best rider ever.”

  “Couldn’t you just tell me all this?”

  “Your voice would grow hoarse, and Tigney would wonder.” Another pause. “The Temple offers many warnings about demons, and they are not all wrong. You may trust Ruchia. Also, you will not be able to waste precious time arguing with her.”

  Taking the hint, Pen turned to the first page. This text was handwritten, not printed from woodblock, which made it easier to read, but also made him worry about how few copies might exist. He tried to settle himself and pay attention, and not read so fast in his excitement that he failed to take it all in.

  After a time, he asked, “Desdemona, what does she mean by enhanced perception?

  “Hm. Can you juggle?”

  “I can manage three balls. I have trouble with four or more.” And there had been strong domestic objections to his attempt to try it with burning brands, like the acrobat he’d seen in the marketplace.

  “Find three things. Or four.”

  The room was not well supplied with balls, apples, or other substitutes, but he finally rolled up two pairs of socks. “So, and?”

  “So, juggle.”

  The three sock balls went as usual; the four, after a brief encouraging run, ended with Pen fishing du
st-smeared sock balls out from under the beds.

  “Now, again,” said Desdemona.

  The sock balls rose—and slowed. They curved in the same trajectories, but Pen felt he might almost take a sip of ale between having to attend to each. His hands moved more languidly, though, and with more effort, as if he were stroking through water.

  “That was fun,” he said, collecting all four out of the air and stopping.

  “We can’t keep that up for very long,” said Desdemona, “but it is useful in a pinch.”

  “Should I wish to take up the trade of a marketplace juggler, I suppose.”

  “It works as well for dodging blows. Whether from fists or blades.”

  “Oh.” Pen thought this through. “Could I dodge arrows?”

  “If there are not too many.”

  “Could I snatch arrows out of the air . . . ?”

  “Only if you were wearing thick gloves.”

  “Could I—”

  “Pen?”

  “Yes?”

  “Keep reading.”

  “Ah. Yes.”

  After a time he asked, “Could I shoot fireballs from my fingertips?”

  Desdemona vented a long-suffering sigh. “No. You may light very, very small fires.”

  Pen pulled over the candle stump and held his forefinger to the black wick. “Show me.” A moment later, he snatched his hand back. “Ow!” He sucked on the scorched finger. The flame licked up, smoked, and steadied.

  “I see it will take you a little practice,” she said serenely. He thought she was laughing at him, but it was hard to tell. He was reminded that she didn’t have to feel the pain.

  “I confess I don’t see much advantage over flint and steel or a spill. Unless you didn’t have them, I suppose.”

  “You may also do the same from across the room. Or across the street.” She added after a moment, “Fire is beloved of the god. You only need a very, very small flame, shrewdly placed, and the fire will do the rest. With equal ease, you can light a candle—or burn down a city.”