“You, ah, see nothing going on in me with your magical vision?”
“I have looked at, and into, so many patients by now, in every stage of this thing, I could diagnose it in my sleep.” And so he was, in his more unpleasant dreams. The waking nightmare was bad enough; he didn’t need the even weirder versions. “You have no incipient bruising fever. Offer your thanks to the god of fools and madmen. Which would be mine, I suppose.”
“Hah.”
Pen addressed his plate. “The elder carter in Tyno died this morning. Add him to your list.” His wife—now widow—had been distraught, with that extra edge that hope disappointed gave. No matter how little Pen tried to promise, how briefly explain, people built up expectations of his magic that crashed down hard with its failures. Worse, he sometimes thought, than if he’d never tried at all. “His brother is getting better, though.”
Rede nodded. Not patients he’d seen, touched, talked to; he could maintain his composure.
“I don’t… I’m starting to wonder if I’m actually doing anything, or just deluding myself.” And everyone else.
Rede tapped his notes. “Oh. That’s really interesting, too. Among the first wave of men who came in with the bruising fever, what, three weeks ago now, one died in two. A few days after Adelis brought you, that dropped to one in five. Now, one in ten. With occasional setbacks. I’m certain that improvement is your doing.”
“That’s… not good enough. My uphill magic is getting stretched too thinly. Even you will be able to tell within a couple more days, because that mortality will start to rise again. I can’t work any faster.” He glanced up at Rede. “When that moment comes, you have to choose which people I will keep treating and which I will abandon. I won’t be able to.” Would Rede put his soldiers first, as Adelis had wanted? It was where his sworn loyalty lay, after all.
“I…” Rede scraped his hand through his scalp, ducked his head, grimaced. “All right.”
Army men. Pen wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or horrified.
Doesn’t matter. He washed down his hash with a not-very-watered beaker of fort wine, and pushed off to the sick-chambers.
* * *
Penric made his way back from the kitchens the following afternoon—late, he was always late these days—wondering whether it would be more efficient to go down for his rounds in Tyno before he washed up and rode into Vilnoc, or after. Crossing the entry court inside the fort’s front gate, he was stopped short by the sight of a new and unexpected figure.
The old man standing with his old horse’s reins twisted around his arm, talking with a gate guard, wore a road-grimy, home-cut version of Bastard’s summer whites, lacking decorative embroidery. A tarnished metallic braid circling the tunic’s standing collar stood in for the formal torc. The silver braid in his sash was merely cheap gray cloth, but the demon inside him, much younger than himself, was entirely genuine.
“Bastard bless us,” breathed Pen, and strode toward them in fragile hope.
The fellow looked to be on the high side of sixty. Likely stouter when younger, much like his bony farm horse; his skin had grown loose with age, wrinkling. In coloration, he was of the Cedonian type, but hewn from a lighter wood, like fresh oak. His hair was cut in a military style overdue for scissors. Once black, it was gray with white streaks that reminded Pen of fog over thawing snow.
The gate guard looked over, and said, “Oh, there he is now.”
The visitor followed his glance to Pen, and his gray eyebrows climbed. He started to step eagerly forward; the young demon within him recoiled in fright at the dense presence of Des, resulting in a sidewise trip, till he frowned sternly and righted himself. “None of that, now. Behave yourself,” he muttered.
The demon settled like a dog cowering before a stern master, and no wonder; it had been a dog, or rather been in a dog, at one time, Pen was certain. The new-hatched elemental had found its early way through lesser animals before that, maybe, but mostly it was doggish. This man was clearly its first human rider, Temple-approved and with luck trained by the white god’s Order. And if he wasn’t, he was about to be…
The other sorcerer looked up at Pen and blinked in surprise. “You are really Learned Penric of Martensbridge? And Lodi? I was expecting someone older.” He waved a familiar note clutched in his free hand, which explained his presence, but not his form of address. Pen had signed his urgent missives Learned Penric of Vilnoc.
“I was at one time, but I owe allegiance to the archdivine of Orbas, now. Via the Bastard’s chapterhouse in Vilnoc.” The functionaries there paid his stipend, anyway. “And you would be…?”
“Oh. Learned Dubro from the town of Izbetsia. Although I’m afraid I’m not very learned, by your standards.” He gave a self-deprecating and somewhat nervous chuckle. “I was Brother Dubro there for years, a dedicat serving the Son of Autumn.” He gestured a tally sign, ending with his hand spread over his heart. “But then there was this demon, which forced many unexpected changes in my life.” He tapped his lips apologetically.
“Yes, they do that,” agreed Pen. “If you’d pledged yourself to Autumn, how did the white god’s Order come to gift you with a demon?”
“It was the other way around. I acquired my demon more-or-less by accident, and the Temple decided I should keep it.”
“Ah. Sorcerers are made that way more often than is commonly realized. I shall like to hear more about that, later. But I see you have one of my letters about the bruising fever?”
“Yes, the Vilnoc chapterhouse forwarded it to me in Izbetsia. But did you really want help from just any sorcerer? Because I have no physician’s training at all.”
“I can remedy that,” said Pen fervently. “You came. That’s the only qualification needed.”
He nodded in uncertainty, still staring in some wonder at Pen. Though not in doubt; he could sense Desdemona as readily as Pen could sense his doggish passenger.
Pen directed the gate guard to offload the saddlebags and stable Dubro’s horse. A polite contest over who was going to carry the bags was won by their owner. Pen led his welcome guest through the fort to the hospice.
“I’m bunking in with the orderlies,” Pen told him. Maybe not a good moment to mention that some had come down sick with the fever themselves? Pen didn’t want to scare this godly gift away. “We’ll find you a spare cot. Try not to wake up anyone who’s sleeping—they probably have night duty.”
Pen had Dubro set his bags on Pen’s bed before following him to the courtyard fountain for a washup.
“How far a ride is it from Izbetsia?” Pen asked, eyeing his travel dirt. He suspected he’d have to look at one of Adelis’s larger-scale maps to find the town marked.
“Two days, at the best speed my old horse and I go,” said Dubro, scrubbing industriously.
“You came quickly?”
“After I got the note I took a day to think about it. And to pray.”
“It is a frightening disease.”
“Oh, that’s not it.” He waved a negating hand, also shaking the water off. His splashes evaporated from the sun-heated tiles. “But I wasn’t sure we could be of use.”
“It’s a very young demon to be set to such a task, though I’ve been thinking about how to make it as straightforward as possible. Let’s go find out.”
“Right now?” He straightened, startled.
“Oh, yes.”
For all his claim to bravery, Dubro did hesitate at the door of the first sick-chamber, but gulped and followed Pen into the dimness and stink. Pen wondered if he should have diverted for some medical lecture first, but really, this was going to be easier to show than describe. He picked a soldier who was too woozy with fever to complain or comment, and had the older sorcerer kneel alongside him.
“Just watch, for the first few.”
Pen had dispensed with the disguising prayers a few beleaguered days ago, but he did make a salute of a tally sign before commencing the first application of uphill magic. Dubro squinted his
eyes in concentration, though following this with inner more than outer vision.
“I’ve only worked with downhill magics, before,” he murmured. “Small and safe.”
“Not unwise, if you’ve had no mentor. Er, have you been all on your own in Izbetsia?”
“We’ve a senior Temple divine who is my supervisor, but he trained with the Father’s Order. It’s not a big town.”
Supervisor, or wary watchman? Pen would wager the latter. So likely not an encourager of experimentation or exploration. Pen could see how being made responsible for something one could neither understand nor control could make one a touch rigid, even without the typical tidy-mindedness of those attracted to the Father of Winter’s service.
You are too charitable, Pen, reproved Des. If this fellow has had his dog for as long as it looks, it’s been a waste of opportunity.
Dubro’s glance shifted aside. He wouldn’t be able to make out Des’s silent speech, but that she spoke, he sensed.
I don’t imagine the dog’s been very chatty, she added.
Ha. Unlike the ten of you…
My first human rider Sugane found the speechless imprints of the mare and the lioness extremely confusing, I’ll grant. But back then she had no Temple support at all. This Orban country man seems luckier.
Pen worked his way all around the six patients in the chamber, then led Dubro out again.
“And now, on to the kitchens.”
“The kitchens? I admit, I’m a little peckish.”
“We’ll get to eat in the orderlies’ mess, later on,” Pen assured him. “But I have an arrangement with the cooks for dumping Des’s chaos, which I’ll demonstrate shortly. Also, I didn’t think your first trials with transferring uphill magic should be on people.”
His brow wrinkled. “All right…”
“Follow me.”
Dubro chuckled as they exited the hospice court. “I already know my way around this fort, or rather, it’s coming back to me. I served here, oh… over forty years ago, because I remember the celebration when young Duke Jurgo was born.”
The duke was now a hale man in his mid-forties, so that dated it with precision. “You were in the Orban army?”
“Aye. I joined at age sixteen, all young and hot—I couldn’t wait to get out of my home village. Funny, after my twenty years, I couldn’t wait to go home. I took my veteran’s allotment of land as close to my birthplace as I could get it, outside Izbetsia. Married a widow I’d known as a girl, had two youngsters of my own before her womb closed up—that was a good time. They’re both grown now. I helped out with the town temple on holy days as a lay dedicat.”
“You didn’t have your demon then?”
“No, that came later. As a surprise all around. I had a good old farm dog, Maska. One night he killed a weasel that was trying to get at our hens. We figured out much later that the weasel had picked up a demon elemental from a wild bird it had killed, probably a quail. I thought for a while the dog had run mad, or fallen sick, and I was going to have to put him out of his misery, but after a week or two he settled back down. He was never quite the same, after, but he was still loyal to me.”
By which Pen concluded that the distressed Dubro had been putting off that unpleasant duty to which, as either soldier or farmer, he should have been steeled. Also that the stronger personality of the dog had overcome the influence of both the demon and its prior animal possessors, which was unusual and most interesting, theologically speaking.
“I kept old Maska for over a year after that, till he died of a tumor. In my arms. And then I got the demonic surprise. It gave me the cold grue later to realize he might just have likely died with my wife or my youngsters, and given the demon to one of them. My wife thought I had run mad and sick, maybe over grief for the dog, and I was wondering myself.”
Pen put in, “My demon, at least, had been in several humans before, and could explain itself.” At great length.
Now, now, murmured Des in amusement, as fascinated by this tale as Pen.
“Ah? That would have helped a good deal, aye. It wasn’t till our divine took me to a Temple sensitive in Vilnoc that I was rightly diagnosed. They sent me on to Trigonie, where there was a special saint who was supposed to have the gift of removing demons, but after looking me over she decided instead I should keep my demon and tame it for the Temple. They swore me to the white god’s service and held me there for a year, training me up as a divine of sorts. I wasn’t very happy about it at the time, but as I behaved myself and did what they told me to, they did let me go back to my farm.”
“Have you farmed there ever since?”
“Aye. My wife left me for a while out of fear, but she came back, good old girl. She passed on to her goddess about four years ago. Our boy has taken over the farm for me, in the main.”
“I see.”
They came to the delivery entrance to the killing room, and Pen ushered Dubro inside. His demon was still very wary of Des, so there was a brief tussle between Dubro getting close enough to his new mentor to hear and see, and his demon trying to get as far away across the room as possible. Dubro won. Des controlled her natural irritation smoothly.
The lads had saved Pen out a crate of chickens for emergency night rations, as was become routine.
“You say you’ve worked downhill magics? Killing vermin, fleas and rats and the like?”
“Yes, I did learn to do that, early on.”
“Poultry for the table?”
“Not so much. I taught Maska firmly as a pup not to worry the chickens, so he gets edgy over that. I just kill them in the usual way, at home.”
“You think of your demon as Maska? You’ve named him?” Pen smiled in approval.
“Keeping his old name seemed easiest. Eh, does your demon have a name? Or names?”
“Eleven of them, one each for her prior human riders, and one I gave her for all of her together. Desdemona, or Des for short. Naming your demon is a very useful thing. A lot of sorcerers don’t figure that out, so good for you.”
“Huh.” He stared at Pen. Or through Pen at Des, maybe. “It—she?—is so dense and deep. Yet she doesn’t ascend? You aren’t afraid?”
“We, ah, came to an understanding early on, so no.” Pen turned back to their more immediate problems. “Divesting the excess chaos that will accrue to your demon from the, as it were, uphill donations to the sick men will be exactly the same as killing vermin, directed to precise targets, so I don’t have to teach you that part.” Thanks be. “Right now, I want you to try placing a bit of the uphill magic just as I showed you in the sick-chamber, but into a chicken.”
“Ah, I get it.” Dubro opened the crate and expertly removed one chicken. He stroked its feathers, frowned, and concentrated. The blast of uphill magic was well-directed, at least. The chicken squawked, flapped its wings wildly, and, as nearly as Pen could tell, died of a heart attack.
“Oh,” said Dubro, daunted. “That wasn’t good.” Gingerly, he set down the feathered corpse, which stopped twitching after a few more moments.
“Actually, it wasn’t bad. Just too much at once. Also, still too much to try to put into a sick person at one go. You had the right move. Now let’s work on finer control.”
Three more chickens died before Dubro caught the trick of it, but then he did, in that odd sudden way so familiar to Pen of breaking through to a new skill. He didn’t quite seem to believe Pen’s praise, but they worked through the rest of the crate, saving a couple of fowls at the end for Dubro to practice divesting the accumulated disorder, after calming Maska’s inhibitions.
Pen ruthlessly slaughtered the survivors, because he next had to walk down to Tyno. Or, at this hour, jog down to Tyno. This left two sorcerers sitting on the stained flagstones surrounded by a dozen dead chickens, and Dubro shaking his head.
“Is this really going to work?”
“Yes,” said Pen firmly, because confidence was important in dealing with demons. And humans. He scrambled to his feet and helped
the older man up. After shouting into the kitchen for the lads to come collect their next plucking job, news not received with joy, Pen led back to the hospice.
“Will it be all right with the Temple authorities for me to be doing this kind of magic?” asked Dubro in lingering doubt. That first chicken had unnerved him, Pen thought.
“I’m the senior Temple authority for sorcery in Vilnoc, so yes.”
Dubro’s lips twitched. “Aye, I’ve known officers like that…”
“Just wait till you meet Adelis. Uh, General Arisaydia.”
“That will be a marvel.” He nodded without irony.
In the ensuing patient chamber, Pen picked a less badly off soldier for Dubro to try. Were their two magics going to prove compatible? Or should Pen work up separate rosters for each of them?
Separate if you can, advised Des. I could handle it, but that dog has enough new things on his plate.
Leaving Pen to assign himself the worst cases; it was obvious enough how this had to go. Again.
The sick soldier eyed the elderly sorcerer with more confidence than he usually bestowed on youthful-seeming Penric; Pen did not try to correct this misapprehension. Dubro knelt, gulped, prayed—more for himself than for his patient, Pen suspected —pressed his spread hand to the fevered chest, and let a dose of magic flow.
“Very good. Stop.”
He hauled Dubro back out to the courtyard, where he blinked in the too-westering sunlight, shaken. His demon was a little twitchy with the new demand and the inflow of disorder, but not at all out of control.
“That was perfect,” Pen told him. Or close enough. “While that’s settling in, let’s go get Master Rede and introduce you. Senior fort physician. He runs the show in the hospice. It’s been a hard month for him, but you’ll find him a good man.”
While Pen wanted to toss Dubro straight into the bottomless pool of need, here, it would be a very bad idea. Young demons were very vulnerable to mishandling. The little time spent training would be repaid later.
The Physicians of Vilnoc Page 9
