Penric and the Shaman

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He had reckoned without the dogs. They gave chase, barking and baying behind him, weaving faster through the trees than the horse could. Incredibly soon, he saw a rippling copper flash at the corner of his vision, and, already above him, heard the profound deep barks of Arrow. They began to drive his horse through the tilted woodland like a red deer, hunted, and its laboring haunches bunched and surged in fresh terror—his fault, for filling its dim head with visions of wolves, echoing and reverberating now from the dogs? But a deer was built for these hazardous slopes; a horse was not.

  A gulf of light opened to his left, and the horse shied wildly, hooves slipping in the wet loam, almost stumbling over the cliff at the top of the slide. It jerked back upright.

  Inglis kept going, the saddle yanked from under him. The world whirled wildly around his head. For an instant, the bed of broken boulders far below him invited him like a bed in truth, an offer of rest at the end of an impossibly long day. A branch brushed his arm, and his hand closed convulsively, unwilled. Bark and skin grated each other off like bits from a blacksmith’s file. Wood snapped, he turned again in air, grasped, arm yanked straight, held, slid, lost it, turned, and smacked hard on his side. If he’d had any breath left, the last impact would have knocked it out. His lungs pulsed and red murk flooded his vision before he was at last able to inhale again.

  It was a dozen breaths before he could lift his head and see where he’d landed. Raw stone blocked his vision a foot from his nose. He twisted the other way, and looked out over the gray valley. He’d come to rest on an irregular ledge about halfway up the sheer drop at the head of the rockslide. It was deeper than a kitchen chair, but only just, and several paces long, but they were paces that led only out into air at the ends.

  No way to climb back up. No way… well, one way down. He eyed the broken rocks fifty feet below him, and wondered if the half-fall would be enough to kill him outright. Certain death still held attraction. Uncertain death, less so. He hurt enough already.

  The skin of his hands was torn, his shoulder wrenched, his bad ankle… not improved. Spectacular bruises for sure. Amazingly, his neck and back and bones generally seemed intact.

  Fifty feet above him, piteous whines sounded. A few barks, less labored or frantic than before—more puzzled yaps, really. Whatever are you doing down there? they seemed to say.

  Truly, I have no idea. I have no idea about anything anymore.

  He lay on his ledge and concentrated on breathing, achievement enough.

  After a time, he became conscious of movement below him. He pushed himself a little up and looked over. The drop reminded him of crawling out on the roof of the kin Boarford’s Easthome city mansion, five floors above a cobbled street—Tollin had dared him, he recalled. The pale face of the sorcerer looked up at him, head back-tipped. Penric was breathing fast, but otherwise seemed unfairly unruffled.

  He shook his head, and called up, “I swear, Inglis, you have a talent for disasters. …It’s not a good talent, mind you. On the other hand, I’d suspected you had help, and now I’m sure of it.”

  Inglis could go neither up nor down, right nor left. He felt as exposed as a wolf pelt nailed to a stable door, and as empty. He could think of no reply, not that the sorcerer had invited one, exactly.

  A hundred paces away across the scree, where the path had been cut off, Gallin cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Baar caught a horse! We’re going for ropes!”

  Learned Penric waved a casual hand in acknowledgment of this news, a lot less excited than Inglis thought he should be. “That will be some time,” he said, half to himself—the over-keen hearing that had come so disconcertingly with his wolf-within had still not deserted Inglis. Penric skinned out of his heavy jacket, turned up the cuffs of his linen shirt, rolled his shoulders, stretched his arms and laced his fingers together, shook them out. “Well, then,” he muttered. “I decline to shout spiritual counsel from the bottom of a well, so I guess I’d better be about this.”

  He flattened himself to the cliff wall and began to climb, barely visible handhold to barely visible foothold.

  His mouth opened, and his voice emerged in a strained, sharp cadence Inglis had not yet heard from the man: “Penric! I have many powers, but I can’t make us fly!”

  Penric grinned, fierce in his strain. “Then you’d best keep quiet and not interrupt for the next few minutes, eh?”

  At a distance, at first, he seemed to scale the rock face like a spider. As he grew closer the illusion dropped away, and he was clearly a man, taller and heavier than he had quite seemed in his smiling affability; the tendons stood out in his hands and arms as he pulled himself up. As he gained each few feet he wheezed, “I admit… it’s been… a while…” When he at last reached the edge of the ledge, he very definitely heaved himself over, scrambling, not like the airy aplomb of vaulting on his horse. “Thank you, Drovo,” he gasped, incomprehensibly, rolling to his knees, shaking out his hands again. “I think.”

  Slowly, gingerly, Inglis pushed himself upright and scooted back till his spine met the stone. His outstretched feet hung over the abyss. Breathing heavily, Penric plopped himself down beside him and stretched his legs out, too. They might have been two boys seated side-by-side on a log across a stream. Perhaps feeling the same, Penric picked up a loose stone and tossed it over the side, cocking his head as if listening for the splash. The faint crack of its landing was a long time coming.

  Pinned crookedly to the left shoulder of his weskit, Inglis saw, where it had lain concealed beneath his coat, the divine sported the Temple braids of his full rank, three loops of interlaced white, cream, and silver, the hanging tails tipped with silver beads. They were stiff and clean, as though seldom worn since Penric had taken his oaths. That could not have been so many months before Inglis had been invested with his own powers. Penric’s ceremony had probably had less blood in it.

  Although, considering the necessary origin of his demon, not less death, nor a lesser sacrifice. Hm.

  Oswyl’s voice called from the rubble below: “Is he all right? Or were you prophetic about precipices?”

  Penric swung around on his belly and hung his head over the edge, a move which made Inglis shudder. He did stretch and crane till he could just make out the locator, standing below looking up as Penric lately had.

  Penric waved back. “Seems to be little the worse. Shaken up, though.”

  “Fools and madmen,” Oswyl muttered, and sat down on a handy boulder, heaving an exhausted sigh. A bigger man, he did not seem inspired to hoist himself up what Inglis had taken for a sheer rock wall after the divine. Sorcerer. Whatever he was. He raised his face and voice and added, “Remember what I said about putting him on a horse?”

  Penric grinned, and called back, “Remember what I said about the luck of such a ride?”

  “Huh.” Oswyl grimaced like a man sucking vinegar. “Carry on, O Learned One.”

  “I intend to. Is he not what every Temple divine desires, a captive audience?”

  “I still want him back when you’re done with your lessons.”

  “Pray for us, then.”

  The gesture Oswyl made back at this was not in the least holy. Penric, still grinning, spun around and sat back up, and Inglis’s spine sought the reassuring rock again.

  The grin faded to a thoughtful look, and Penric began to edge away, then stopped himself. “Scuolla has joined us,” he said quietly.

  “Is that”—Inglis’s hands went to his temples—“why I feel this horrible pressure in my head?”

  “Did you hit it, in your fall?” A look of medical concern flitted across Penric’s features, and he leaned across the space to lift his palm and press against Inglis’s forehead; Inglis flinched.

  “Not much,” said Inglis, as Penric murmured, “No…”

  His hand falling back, Penric went on with maddening obscurity, “Then I think it must be your other visitor.”

  Inglis uncompressed his lips, and said, “What does Scuolla look lik
e? To you?”

  Penric stared at the empty space between them. “A plain old mountain man in a sheepskin vest, rudely interrupted when he went out to feed his animals. Not at all what I would have taken as a great-souled one, beloved of the gods. Lesson to me.”

  “Great-souled? I thought that was kings, and, and generals.”

  “No, those are merely great men.” Penric kept on gazing curiously at nothing. “He is very patient. Well, he would have to be, wouldn’t he, to work his art in a medium that takes more than a man’s lifetime to complete. …Another who waits here is not so patient, I think.” The pressure in Inglis’s head throbbed; the divine made the five-fold tally. “So let us pray, too.”

  “Pray? Are you serious?”

  Penric turned his hands out in a shrug. “It’s my job. My other job, I was lately reminded. From my very first oath, three years before these”—he touched his braids—“were tacked on me.”

  “So what do we pray for, ropes? Pulleys?”

  “Such material aids are the purview of men, not gods.” He held up his hand and spread out his fingers. “The five theological purposes of prayer, I was taught, are service, supplication, gratitude, divination, and atonement. You could easily go five-for-five up here, I think.” He dropped his hand and smiled faintly out over the valley; the dreary view did not seem to rate such approval.

  “What do you pray for?” Inglis thrust back, growing surly with this elliptical… humor, if it was humor. At his expense, of course. He was feeling entirely destitute, just now.

  “I try not to bother the gods any more than I can possibly help,” returned Penric, unperturbed. “Once, One answered me back. It was an experience to make a man cautious.”

  “Twice, I think,” growled Inglis.

  “Hm?”

  He leaned his aching skull back against the stone and recited, “Other, Mother, Father, Brother, Sister…”

  Penric’s lips twitched. “Are you feeling, ah, thwacked?”

  “If I were any more thwacked right now, I don’t think I could sit upright.” Inglis sighed. “You go right on being stingy with your prayers, Learned.”

  “Let us practice yours some more, then.”

  “Will that be any safer?”

  “I trust not. Begin. Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Other…”

  Their recent drill made his reluctant response fall inevitably: “Bless this work and help me serve another.” He eyed the empty space Penric had left between them. Had the couplet’s wording not been so simple and silly as he’d thought?

  “Continue on your own.”

  “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Other…”

  It was foolish. He was a fool. So was Penric. They were all great fools, here. He should just give up and live with the fact. The other choice was the rock bed, which had already killed one shaman, which could cap a lifetime of foolery. Did the gods take fool souls, as well as great ones? No, They couldn’t, for the fools ran away. Gods, but he was tired of running away.

  As the fifth repetition left his lips, he broke through. As sudden and astonishing as his very first ascent ever, he was there. But this time he could hold his place, like a falcon gripping the air and, miraculously, rising without even beating its outstretched wings.

  The ledge, the stone behind and the vale in front, the material world, were still present, but barely, as a great undefined space seemed to open out all around him. Undefined, yet seething with potential. But he was not alone in it.

  Sitting next to him indeed was an old mountain man in a sheepskin vest, his feather-decked hat pushed back on his head. He wasn’t an image on glass, though, but full of color, vastly more intense than the faint gray valley around them. His spirit-density was the very opposite of transparent. The beautiful Great Dog he bore within him had made its home in this kennel for so long, the two were nearly one, intertwined. He smiled in a friendly way at Inglis, with a strange pure kindness unalloyed by irony or judgment. He didn’t even seem to say, You are very laggard, though Inglis thought he had a right.

  Penric sat beyond him, staring head-tilted with concern at Inglis’s body. The blond man’s solid self was grayed out as well, along with all the other surfaces of the world, but for the first time Inglis saw under the sunny exterior. The sorcerer’s interior was terrifying, its layered complexity reaching back through time like a cavern passageway descending deep into the earth, dark with secrets. His demon. And he lives with this? Every day?

  Then he looked up, farther.

  A tall figure leaned casually against the ledge wall beyond Penric. It seemed a young huntsman in the poor men’s dress of this country, much like the fellows who had brought Inglis in off the trail that first morning, or like Scuolla. A triangular sheepskin cap topped his glowing copper curls, which were the color of Blood’s fur. His face was a light much too strong to look at directly, and Inglis shaded his spirit-eyes with his spirit-hands, then clapped them over his face altogether. All else was blocked, but not the burning light. He let his hands fall, and found himself gasping as though he had been running.

  He thought the face smiled at him, like the sun through the cool air on a mountain’s side, warming, welcome. And far, far more terrifying than the demon.

  The figure waved a casual hand. Go on.

  “How, lord?”

  Call it out of him. For you, it will come. It was a very good dog, after all.

  It couldn’t be that simple. Could it? Here, it can. This is a simple place, after all. And Inglis wasn’t even sure whose thought that was.

  Inglis inhaled the no-air of the plane, held out his hand as if to a strange dog to sniff, and called, “Come, boy.” Then felt stupid for the trailing endearment, for surely the beast was far older than he was…

  Stop that, said the figure’s voice, amiably, like a man commanding his pet to stop scratching. This is the time for my judgments, not yours.

  The response was slow, like an old dog or an old man getting up, one-half at a time. Stiffly, but obediently, the shape flowed out of Scuolla. Slipping through Inglis’s hands, like a whisper of fur as a dog wriggled out of his grasp. And gone. Where? Surely not into utter dissolution?

  “Will it be well?” Inglis asked timidly.

  All will be well, in my hands. But you see now why all hunts, however exciting, must end with respect for the creature hunted. That is your hope, too, after all.

  Inglis had no idea what to say to that. In terror lest the figure would vanish again, as if—no, he neither summoned nor dismissed this like some mere apparition, but he blurted, “Lord, there is one other.”

  I do not forget. But that is your task, now.

  At some point, Penric had drawn the knife from its sheath and held it ready on his lap. He squinted in concern at Inglis’s body, still sitting up against the rock wall: more motionless than sleep, too tense for death. With a huge effort, Inglis flopped out its hand, open. Cautiously, Penric laid the knife on its palm. The hand convulsed around the ivory hilt; Penric quietly lifted hand and knife back into Inglis’s lap.

  For the first time, Inglis realized he had appeared on the plane in his human form—not as wolf, or even as man-with-wolf’s-head. It might be a good thing. The stretched-out boar spirit was, he saw now through its ferocity, quite frightened enough. This time, he coaxed it out softly, gently. He had hated it for what it had done to Tollin, and through Tollin to himself, but it was one of the Son’s creatures with the rest. He handed it off to the waiting god, and bowed his head in respect, and spread his fingers wide over his heart in His sign.

  Tollin unwound from the knife and stood up, looking dizzied and bewildered. His colors were ragged, paler than Scuolla’s, who sat taking it all in like a satisfied onlooker to some beloved campfire tale. Tollin’s mouth opened as he saw Inglis, though no sound came out, but then his face rose to the figure by the wall, and he stood stunned.

  For a moment, to Inglis’s horror, Tollin held back. Guilt, grief? Fear of not being good enough, strong enough… it had no
t just been youthful arrogance that had led him to beg for the boar spirit, after all. A mixture of motives not savory, but so, so understandable to Inglis now. Tollin stood silent, and small, and ashamed.

  The Son of Autumn held out His hand, close but not touching. Tollin’s face turned away, suffused with misery, but his hand jerked out, once, twice. On the second, his hand was grasped, and all anguish fled from his features, because the astonished awe left no room for it.

  And then he was gone.

  The Hunter turned then, bent, and extended his hand to Scuolla. Who, to Inglis’s surprise, spoke, and in the affectionate voice of a man to a long-time comrade: “But will there be good beer?”

  The Hunter’s voice returned, in like humor: “If there is beer, it will be very good. If there is not, it will be because there’s something better. It’s not a wager you can lose. Come on, old man.”

  As the Hunter heaved Scuolla up, the old man said, “You took your time, getting here.”

  “I did My best with what I had,” the god answered him back.

  “Seems so.” Scuolla looked warmly down at Inglis. “Take good care of my dogs, lad.”

  Inglis nodded, breathless. “I will, sir.”

  Scuolla dipped his chin in pleased acceptance. “Now I can go.”

  “About time,” his Friend murmured, amused. “Who is dawdling now?”

  Inglis found himself on his knees, holding up both hands palm-out, fingers spread. He hardly knew what he meant to say. Is that all, am I done? Instead it came out, “Will we meet again?”

  The Hunter smiled. Once, for certain.

  And then Inglis let go, and he was falling, falling, back into the world, laughing so hard he was crying, or crying so hard he was laughing, or some other reaction much too large for any human frame to hold.

  Fortunately, Learned Penric was waiting to catch him before he rolled off the ledge that he’d forgotten was before him.