Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold

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 h
e 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?”

  Oswyl shook his head.

  Penric said slowly, “I think we may no longer be hunting. We may be trapping. If that innkeeper told us true, Inglis kin Wolfcliff seeks another shaman. Find the nearest one, and he may come to us.” Come, be brought or be driven—this game would not evade such Beaters as Penric had begun to suspect were in play.

  Gallin said plaintively, “But why should a shaman seek a shaman? What could a royal shaman, even a disgraced one, possibly want with a mere country hedge shaman?”

  Another good question. That their quarry sought such a practitioner had been enough to direct their pursuit. Maybe he should have thought a step further…? Des snorted.

  Oswyl’s logical mind was starting to work on the question. He offered tentatively, “He seeks to take refuge with someone who will hide him?”

  Penric threw in, “Or perhaps he plans a suicide, yet does not want to be sundered like poor Scuolla.” Yes, suicide must pose a problem for such an invested person. Some suicides sought sundering, but many another was hurrying to the hoped-for refuge of their god. The Temple spent a good deal of effort trying to discourage that particular approach to divinity.

  Oswyl chewed this over, looking as though he did not like the taste. “Beyond my mandate,” he said at last.

  But not beyond mine… in principle. Another disturbing thought. Today seemed unusually full of them.

  At the sound of hoofbeats, Penric looked up to see a rider cantering toward them. After a moment, he recognized one of their guardsmen, Heive.

  “Sirs!” he called, reining in before them. “Daughter be thanked, I found you. Goodwife Gossa and my sergeant beg that you return at once. A stranger has come to the village, and he could be the man we seek. Dark hair and a Wealdean accent, at least, though oddly dressed, and I couldn’t swear to his age.”

  “You’ve seen him?” said Oswyl, rising in his stirrups in excitement. “You haven’t tried to approach him, have you?”

  “No, sir,” said Heive fervently. “He came to the acolyte’s house, seeking him, he said. Goodwife Gossa told him you were out on an errand and sent him to wait in the temple, and for me to ride for you. The sergeant and Baar are watching the building from a distance. He’d not come out by the time I left.”

  “We’d best hurry,” said Gallin in a voice choked with alarm, and led the way, kicking his horse into a canter. Oswyl was right on his heels. Penric and Heive fell in behind; Blood ran after them. Pen was suddenly glad he’d brought his bow along, rather than leaving it with his saddlebags in the temple stable.

  At some risk of bringing in the horses wet and winded, they made fast time back to the village street, finding it bare of villagers. They stopped a few houses away from the temple. The guard sergeant waved from where he hunkered down behind someone’s garden gate, and pointed to the temple door. “Still in there,” he mouthed.

  Oswyl returned a silent salute. They all dismounted. Blood, panting and muddy, made a lunge for the temple doors. Gallin grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him, whining, to his house, where Gossa could be seen peeking through the front window, beckoning urgently at him. Pen unlaced his bow from his saddle, strung it, and shrugged on his quiver. The other two guardsmen joined them. The armed party made its way quietly to the temple portico.

  Oswyl gestured Penric ahead. “All right, sorcerer,” he muttered. “Go on.”

  Wait, what, all by myself? “Wouldn’t it be better for us all to rush him at once?”

  The expressions on four faces seemed to disagree with him. “If this is a false lead,” said Oswyl, “you are the one man among us who can tell at a glance.”

  Gallin and Gossa came out the door of their house, and stood holding hands and watching Pen anxiously. Pen swallowed, nocked his arrow, and stepped into the dimness of the temple’s interior.

  Light me, he thought to Desdemona, and the shadows fled from his eyes, leaving his vision clear.

  The man lay prone on the wooden temple floor, just this side of the cold fire plinth, arms out, in what would be the attitude of deepest supplication, except he was not aimed toward any wall shrine in particular. Penric wasn’t sure if he was seeing prayer, or exhaustion. He was unshaven and wore a grab-bag of garb, townsman’s clothing but a peasant’s woven-withy boots, and a mountaineer’s sheepskin cap. One hand gripped a long stick. By his side lay a huge dog, black and tan, head down on crossed paws in an attitude of canine boredom. Its head came up at Pen’s approach, triangular ears pricked; its tail thumped desultorily on the boards, although it also growled. Perhaps both it and Pen were equally confused?

  If Blood had been more-dog, this one was even more so, dense with presence. This is a Great Beast. Not so, Des?

  Impressive, she conceded.

  “Sit up,” Pen commanded, in what he hoped was a convincing arresting-officer voice; “But don’t get up.”

  The man jerked to his knees, grabbing for his stick to support his stance. His sleeve, falling back, revealed an arm crisscrossed with long, vicious-looking scabs. The knife at his belt glowed with strange power swirling like an aurora, not in Pen’s eyes but in Des’s. He stared wildly at Pen, mouth falling open as he drew sudden breath. The dog stood up and growled with what seemed a lot more authority than Pen had mustered.

  “Inglis kin Wolfcliff,” said Pen, certain now of what he faced. And then had no idea of what to say next. This whole scene was so sideways to any of his preconceptions about the man, anything he might have rehearsed would have been worthless anyway. As neither man nor dog launched himself at Pen’s throat, he eased the tension on the string and let his bow droop, but still held it ready. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  IX


  Inglis used his stick to climb to his full height, although his right leg, much abused by the trip down the mountain this morning, threatened to buckle from the pain. The man before him seemed a blond apparition, inexplicable. “Go away,” Inglis tried.

  The intruder just tilted his head. “Good attempt, wolf-man. A bit misdirected. Although wouldn’t ‘Give me your horse’ seem more to the point?”

  How did he know…? And then, however badly his powers were crippled, Inglis recognized the fellow for what he was. And, five gods, or should that oath be Bastard’s teeth!, he was. His spirit-density was stunning. “Sorcerer.” Inglis was confounded by hope and fear. And by hurt, and heartache, and exhaustion, and his long, futile flight. “Temple, or hedge?” Or, five gods help them all, rider or ridden? Surely any demon so powerful must be ascendant? Could Inglis persuade it to…

  “Temple through and through, I’m afraid. You are not more surprised than I was.” He glanced aside at Arrow, who had shifted to stand at Inglis’s right hand. “How did you come by one of Scuolla’s dogs?”

  “It found me. Up on the mountain. When I was lost, trying to find a shortcut to the Carpagamo road. It won’t stop following me.” Wait, how did he know of Scuolla?

  “Ah. Huh.” The blond man’s lips crooked up in a smile of… dismay? “Did it bring you here, do you think?”

  “I… don’t know.” Had it? He glanced down at the big dog, his companion for days. Inglis had assumed the animal was attracted to him because he was a shaman invested, and it had somehow confused him with its prior master. Maker. “I came looking for…” He hardly knew what, anymore.

  “You came looking for Acolyte Gallin, I understand. Why?”

  “An old woman up at the summer grazing camp told me that he knew Scuolla. I thought he might know… something.”

  “Did you know Scuolla has been dead under a rock fall for the past two months?”

  “I was told that, too.”

  “And did she tell you that he was a hedge shaman?”

  “No. I… guessed it. From the dog.”