Penric and the Shaman (Penric & Desdemona Book 2) (9 page)

“Not to your letters, no.” Penric bared his teeth in a brief, ironic grimace, an edged look Oswyl had not seen in his face before.

Gallin confessed, “I’d thought to find another hedge shaman for Scuolla, somewhere up or down the mountains, to perform their last secret rites for him. Him seeming out of reach of my prayers. Scuolla had his Great Beast from the shaman here before him, long ago when he was a young man, and performed the cleansing for his mentor in turn when he died. He was bringing along his own apprentice, but he’d not invested the man with his powers yet as far as I know. Well, I do know, for Wen’s soul was signed taken up by the Son at his funeral the day after the tragedy.”

Gossa nodded. “Plain as plain, that one was. Greatly to his family’s relief amidst their grief.”

Oswyl began, “I should explain something more about the fugitive we hunt—” but Penric flung up his hand, interrupting him.

“Wait just a little on that, Locator, if you please.”

It didn’t please Oswyl much, but Penric was turning to Gallin. “How far is it to this maybe-haunted rockslide of yours?”

“About five miles up the East Branch road, or thereabouts. An hour’s brisk ride.” Gallin squinted intently at Penric. “You say you are a Temple sensitive. Can you sense ghosts?”

“Ah… with a bit of special help, yes.”

“Can you get that help?”

“I carry it with me.”

Gallin grew eager. “Could you—would you—would you be willing to ride out to the fall with me, and sense what you can? It would put my mind to rest.” He reflected. “Or not, but at least I’d
know
.”

Such an expedition couldn’t be back till nightfall, Oswyl calculated. They would be stuck in this village till
tomorrow
. “
Time
,” he gritted under his breath.

Penric’s glance flicked up. He murmured back, “You could go on without me.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Well, then.” He turned to the acolyte. “I’m willing to take a look, yes. I can’t make any promises.”

Gallin actually clapped his hands in relief. “We can be off as soon as the horses are saddled.”

“We should take the red dog,” added Penric.

Gallin stilled. “Ah. Aye.” He rose to lead the way, pausing only to grasp his wife’s hands in a farewell. At least the goodwife eyed them all more approvingly, as they clumped out after him.

VIII

Penric studied the dog, Blood, as it cantered along behind the acolyte’s horse. It wasn’t undog, or not-dog, or even, really, terribly uncanny. It was just… more-dog, a peculiar density of itself.

Can you show me more?
he asked Desdemona.

You are seeing what I am seeing, more or less
, she replied.
Turnabout being fair play.

Hm
.

Oswyl nudged his horse up beside Pen’s on the rutted wagon trail—it was unduly flattering to dub it a road. After a moment he murmured, “You really can sense ghosts?”

“Desdemona can. I don’t have her share the sight with me unless I ask. It’s distracting, especially in old places where many people have died over the years.” When first this skill had come to him, a few months after Des had moved in, he’d tripped himself up dodging around things no one else could see, much to her amusement, till he’d worked out how to get her to shut it off. Some people had thought he’d been taken with fits. The real explanation hadn’t improved things by much.

“Can all sorcerers do so?”

“I imagine it varies. Those possessing younger or less experienced demons may be less adept.”

“I wonder that my Order does not requisition them more. The ability to interrogate the dead… would be most helpful in the instance of a murder.”

“Mm, not as much as you’d think. Most souls go at once to their gods, when severed from their bodies. It’s the god who is present at the funeral, not the person. An invoked messenger.” An odd thing when Pen thought about it, that so great a Presence should stoop to so small a task.

Oswyl frowned in what Pen was beginning to recognize as professional frustration. As distinguished from the dozen other ways he could frown.

“In any case,” Pen consoled him, “it would be hard for the sensitives to correctly interpret and report what they see. Even a fresh ghost still holding the form of its body can’t speak. The sundered soon grow muddled, like an old man who’s lost his wits along with his teeth. They exhaust the ability to assent to their god by the time they exhaust their ability to refuse. Which is what makes them sundered, I suppose.” Indifferent, beyond attachment or pain, attenuating into pale smudges, and then, at length, gone. Pen wasn’t sure he could convey how
disturbing
this process was to see, midway, without being
frightening
, exactly. Well, not after the first brush.

You squeaked in terror
, said Des.

Did not
, Pen thought back.
That was just a yelp of surprise
. The ghosts, once understood, had seemed less horrifying than his first fear, that he was hallucinating or going mad. Still, not
comfortable
.

Gallin turned his horse aside onto a narrower trail, weaving up through the trees, and Pen and Oswyl fell into single file behind him. After a damp, scrambling time, Blood bounded ahead, whining, and the steep woods opened out abruptly onto the rock fall.

Rock fall
was a serious understatement, Pen realized. The slide was perhaps a hundred paces across and three times that in height, a fan of debris including boulders the size of wagons, mud, and a tangle of uprooted and snapped trees. At its wide foot, the local stream had backed up and routed around; at its narrower head, a raw and ragged new cliff marked where it had heaved itself out of the mountain’s weakened side. He imagined being caught under the roar, not knowing whether to run forward or back, so screened by the trees on the shuddering path as not to know either was equally futile till too late.

The three horsemen all pulled up at the edge, but Blood sprang onward, scrambling over the treacherous footing, sniffing and uttering small yips. Penric did not at first see what the dog sought, and then, at a shift from Desdemona, did.

Oh
.

The old man sat on a boulder midway across the scree and a little down from where the path was cut off. He wore the common garb of workmen in this country, boots, trousers, rough-spun shirt, a capacious sheepskin vest fleece turned inward and hanging open around him. A short-brimmed hat was pushed back on his head, a few feathers stuck in its band. Penric could not discern their hues, for feathers, clothes, and the man who wore them were all faded to a colorless translucency.

As Pen watched, Blood made his way, not quite unerringly, to the man’s side, and whimpered and yipped around him like a dog sniffing around a badger’s den that was too small to enter. The man smiled faintly and lifted his hand to stroke the dog’s head. The beast calmed and sat, silky tail waving like a signal flag.

Pen dismounted and handed his reins to Oswyl. “Hold my horse, please.”

“Can you see anything?” asked Gallin anxiously.

“Oh, yes.” Pen turned and began to clamber across the debris.

“Be careful!” called Gallin. “It could be unstable!”

Pen waved understanding.

Incurious as an old idler on a town square bench, the man watched him approach. Pen’s gloves saved him from tearing his hands as he tested each hold, seeking balance rather than suspect support. He was breathing heavily by the time he arrived at the boulder and found firm-ish footing. He stared down at the revenant, who stared back up but then returned his attention to his worried dog

“Master Scuolla,” Pen tried. “Shaman, sir.”

The man seemed not to hear. But he had noticed Pen, and was most certainly interacting with the dog. A sundered soul some, what, two months into its dissolution ought to be a lot more vague than this. More distanced.

He looks as if he hasn’t been dead more than a few days
, Des agreed.

Have you seen anything like this before?

Des shook Penric’s head.
The only shaman I ever met was very much still alive.

Can you reach him any more directly?

No more than we have done
.

Feeling rude, Pen tried passing his hand through the man’s head. Any chill was indistinguishable from the mountain air. The man lifted his face as if to a passing breeze, but then returned his attention to his dog, who fawned on him.

Des had gone quiet. Pen stood back and thought. His thoughts were extremely uncomfortable. The most uncomfortable of them was that this called as much for the skills of a divine as a sorcerer. He made the five-fold tally, and tried to compose his mind in prayer. Asking his god, or indeed any of the gods, for a sign seemed a madly dangerous thing to do, but in any case no sign was forthcoming. In the silence, he stared across the scree at Acolyte Gallin, and contemplated the disquieting notion that maybe he wasn’t supposed to be the supplicant, here. Maybe he was supposed to be the
answer
.

But old Scuolla needs a shaman, not a sorcerer
. And while Locator Oswyl had been trying to lay hands on his fugitive shaman for weeks, so far they’d come up empty.

Well, if the dead man had lingered here for two months, he probably wasn’t going anywhere else immediately. Though time was clearly not his friend. Pen called to Blood, who ignored him, and made his way, slipping and sliding, back across the rock fall to the horses.

“Could you sense anything?” asked Acolyte Gallin.

“Oh, yes. He’s there, all right. Communing with his dog, although not much with me.”

Oswyl blinked at him, startled, and stared across at Blood licking the air by what must appear to him a bare boulder. Licking at Scuolla’s ghostly hand, his tongue sliding through it in chill confusion.

Gallin signed himself, looking distraught. “He is sundered, then.”

“Ah…” said Pen. “Maybe not yet.”

“Surely it is too late…?”

“I can’t claim to know what’s going on, here. My first guess is that his shamanic powers allow his spirit to still draw some nourishment from the world even though separated from his body. But it’s been a long time. He seemed… it’s hard to explain… tired. I think he’s still fading, but more slowly than other men would.”

“Then there’s still a chance to save him? If a shaman might be found?”

“If a shaman might be found, it would still be worth a try, at least.”

Gallin’s breath huffed out, as he stared across to where Blood lingered by the side of his old comrade and friend. “If there are any such powers hiding elsewhere in these mountains, my letters should have brought me
some
word by now.”

Not your letters. Your prayers
. And Penric wasn’t going to say
that
out loud.

Oswyl was acquiring a whole new frown, as he perhaps made some of the connections Pen just had. Or at least noticed the excessive amount of coincidence starting to pile up. As a locator, he was surely suspicious of coincidences. As a divine, Penric was too, but in a very different way. He remembered the shrewd gray eyes of the Saint of Idau, and the white god who had once looked through them at him.
At us.
Desdemona, remembering with him, shuddered.

“In any case, we can do nothing more here right now.” Pen retrieved his reins from Oswyl and swung himself back up into his saddle.

Gallin called Blood, who didn’t come until Scuolla’s ghost made a releasing sort of
go on
gesture. The acolyte then offered the hospitality of the Linkbeck Temple to Oswyl’s party for the night—Linkbeck lacked an inn as such, although Gallin assured them he could find beds for all among his villagers, no need to camp in the stable loft. He looked back over his shoulder as they turned onto the path again, and breathed in a hesitant undertone, “Not hopeless?”

Penric wasn’t sure to whom that was addressed, but answered, “I am not certain. Locator, perhaps the time has come to explain the full story of the man we seek.”

Oswyl gestured assent, but did not begin till they turned back onto the wagon track and he could ride side-by-side with Gallin. Penric fell behind, listening. Gallin made exclamations at all the expected high and low points, till Oswyl, drawing toward the end of his account, let fall a
Learned Penric
.

Gallin turned in his saddle and stared in astonishment. Penric returned a wary smile and a little wave of his fingers. He was unsurprised when Oswyl finished and Gallin dropped back beside him, brows crooked in new inquiry. It was embarrassing when a man twice his age looked to
him
for answers, especially when he didn’t have them.

“You are really a sorcerer, and a full-braid divine?”

Pen cleared his throat. “Long story. But all Temple sorcerers must undergo a divine’s training and oaths. We seldom take up the duties of a regular divine, though.”

Gallin seemed to consider this, sidelong. “Does your Order
have
regular duties?”

Pen puffed a laugh. “Good question. We go where we’re needed, I think.”

“And yet you were not sent?” Gallin asked as Oswyl reined back to Penric’s other side, trapping him in the center of their attention. The acolyte looked across: “Either of you?”