Penric's Demon Read online

  The Temple guards kept them mostly to a trot, walking up the hills, a rhythm designed to eat the most miles in the least time. It was not the breakneck pace of a courier, but it did assume a change of horses being available, which they took at a noon halt at a Temple way-station. They passed farm carts, pack mules, cows, sheep, and country folk in small villages. Once, carefully, they rode around a company of marching pike men, recruits on their way to being exported to other lords’ wars. Like Drovo, Pen thought. He wondered how many would ever march home. Better it seemed to export cheese or cloth, but it was true that fortunes were made in the military trade. Though seldom by the soldiers, any more than by the cheeses.

  While ascending the hills, Pen coaxed their guards to talk a little. He was surprised to learn that they were not Divine Ruchia’s own retainers, but had been assigned to her at the border town of Liest, when she’d crossed out of Darthaca on her way to Martensbridge; likewise the woman servant Marda. Gans was indignant to learn that Marda had been allowed to give a deposition and then head for home. Trinker and Wilrom were quite apprehensive about what their seniors would say when it was learned that they had lost their charge on the road, helpless though they had been to prevent it. They had come prepared to fight bad men, not bad hearts. As for the fumbling of her valuable demon into the chance-encountered younger brother of a minor valley lord . . . no one seemed to be looking forward to explaining that.

  At dusk, with forty miles of muddy road behind them, they halted at a modest town that boasted a house of the Daughter’s Order, which took them in. Penric was again shown to a room by himself; a smiling dedicat brought him hot water and food, and he smiled back in gratitude, but she did not linger. A check outside his door found a local guardsman standing sentry. Pen said a hesitant hello and retreated, too tired to mind.

  His room was as small as the one at the hospice, but better furnished; chairs with embroidered cushions, a table with a mirror and stool clearly meant for lady guests, something a house of the Daughter of Spring was more likely to host. Pen took advantage by sitting down with his comb, undoing his queue, and attacking the day’s accumulated snarls, which his fine, pale blond hair was prone to.

  When he glanced up at the mirror, his mouth said, “Yes, let’s get another look at you.”

  Pen froze. Was the demon awake again? His jaw clamped shut; his throat tightened.

  How did the thing perceive the world, anyway? Did it share his vision, his hearing? His thoughts? Did it have to take turns looking out, as with his voice, or was it always there, like a bird perched on his shoulder?

  He breathed, unlocked his muscles. Said, “Would you like to speak?” And waited.

  “Want to look,” said the demon through his mouth. “We want to see what we’ve bought.” Its speech was fairly clear, its accent the cultured Wealdean of the lands around Martensbridge, as Ruchia’s had been.

  Pen had not spent much time in front of mirrors since he’d grown big and fast enough to evade older sisters bent on using him as a large doll. His own features, in the glass, suddenly grew strange to him. But his vision did not go black; it seemed the two of them shared his eyes together.

  His face, as lean as his body, had good bones, he’d been told. His fair skin was redeemed from its youth by what he hoped was a reasonably assertive nose. Long lashes framed what Mama had fondly called lake-blue eyes. In Pen’s experience lakes were more often gray, green, blinding white with snow, or black glass if frozen on a cold, still night. But on a rare bright summer day lakes could be that color, he supposed.

  Nobody else had been talking to him; nobody else had been telling him anything. Had he been missing a chance? He exhaled, relaxed his throat, tried to soften the set of his tired, tense shoulders. To make himself open. “Can you answer questions?”

  A snort. “If they’re not too witless.”

  “I can’t guarantee that.”

  The Hmm from his throat answering this did not seem hostile, at least.

  Pen began in the simplest way he could think of. “What’s your name?”

  A surprised pause. “My riders call me Demon.”

  “That’s like calling your horse Horse, or me Boy. Or Man,” he hastily revised this. “Even a horse gets a name.”

  “How would we get a name—Boy?”

  “I . . . suppose most names are given. By people’s parents. By creatures’ owners. Sometimes they are inherited.”

  A long silence followed this. Whatever the entity had been expecting from him, it evidently hadn’t been this.

  His mouth said, hesitantly, “I suppose we could be Ruchia.”

  Another voice objected, “But what about Helvia? Or Amberein?”

  Yet another voice said something in a language Pen didn’t even recognize, though the cadences seemed to tease his understanding; he thought Umelan might have been another name. More unknown words spouted from his mouth, three voices, four; he lost track till it all ended in an inarticulate growl and a weird squeal.

  “How many are you?” asked Pen, startled. “How many . . . generations?” How many riders had this old demon attached itself to, and copied—or stolen—life from?

  “You expect us to do arithmetic?”

  Pen’s brows went up. “Yes,” he decided.

  “There will be a price. He doesn’t know about the price.” That accent was . . . Darthacan?

  “Ruchia has lately paid,” said Ruchia’s voice. “That reserve will be long, drawing down.”

  A surly pause. “Twelve,” said a voice.

  “Only if we count the lioness and the mare,” muttered another. “Must we?”

  “So . . . so are you twelve persons, or one?” Pen asked.

  “Yes,” said the Ruchia-voice. “Both. At once.”

  “Like, um, like a town council?”

  “ . . . We suppose.” The voice was not impressed.

  “Are—were—you all, er, ladies?”

  “It is customary,” said a voice. Though another added, “She was no lady!”

  Customary, Pen gathered, for a demon to be handed on to another rider of the same sex. But not, obviously, theologically required, or he wouldn’t be in this fix. Dear gods. Have I just acquired a council of twelve invisible older sisters? Ten, he supposed, if he didn’t count the mare and the, what, lioness? Did either of them have names in their animal tongues to argue about?

  “I think you had better have one name,” said Pen. “Though if I want to speak to, to a particular layer of you, that one could have—inherit—her old rider’s name, I suppose.” Twelve? He would sort them out somehow.

  “Hmm.” A most dubious noise, of uncertain origin.

  “I have two names,” he offered. “Penric, which is my particular name, and Jurald, which is my kin name. The name for all of you could be like your kin name.”

  Pen hoped no one was listening to this—all in his voice, ultimately—through the walls. No wonder Marda had believed the sorceress’s utterances incomprehensible. He thought to add, “Did you speak to Learned Ruchia in this fashion?”

  “In time,” said the Ruchia-voice, “we had silent speech.”

  How much time did that take? Pen wondered. And if it went on long enough, might a man no longer know which voice was his own? He shuddered, but wrenched his mind back to the moment. “You ought to have a name for when I mean all of you, as one. Not Demon. Something nicer than what I’d call a dog, for the five gods’ sakes. How if I pick something? Make it a present.”

  The silence this time was so long, he wondered if the creature had gone back to sleep, or into hiding, or whatever it did when he could not feel or hear it. “In twelve long lives,” it said quietly at last, “no one has ever offered us a present.”

  “Well, that’s not . . . not an easy thing. I mean, you don’t exactly have a body, so how could anybody give you any material gift? But a name is a thing of the air, of the mind and the spirit, so a fellow could give it to a spirit, right?” He felt he was making headway, here. And because
betrothal had been lately on his mind, he tossed in, at a hazard, “A courting gift.”

  He had the sense of an explosive Huff! but no sound came with it. Had he thrown a creature of chaos into confusion? That seemed only fair, considering what it was doing to him.

  But then the ambiguous voice said, cautiously, “What do you offer? Penric of Jurald.”

  He hadn’t actually got that far in his thinking yet. He choked in panic. Steadied himself. Reached for inspiration, and caught it. “Desdemona,” he said, suddenly certain. “I read it in a book of tales from Saone, when I was a boy, and thought it sounded very fine. She was a princess.”

  A faint, flattered exhalation through his nose.

  “Amusing,” said the Ruchia-voice. It seemed to be the dominant one; was that because it was freshest? Or had the late divine held the creature longest? Or what?

  Another long silence; Pen yawned in exhaustion. Were they taking a vote in there? Had he started a civil war in his own gut? That could be bad. He was about to take it all back, when the ambiguous voice said, “Accepted.”

  “Desdemona it is, then!” he said, relieved. He wondered if it would shorten to Des, when they grew to know each other better. Like Pen. That could be all right.

  “We thank you for your gift of the spirit. Pretty Penric . . .” The voice fell away in a weary whisper, and Pen guessed the uprooted creature was spent for the night.

  As was he. He staggered dizzily to bed.

  * * *

  The next morning’s ride brought them early to the big Crow River at the foot of the Raven Range, where they turned downstream on the main east-west road that followed it. The Ravens, once the mist cleared enough to unveil them, and before the afternoon rains closed in, were greener and less lofty than the fierce icy peaks in whose shadow Pen had grown up, but formidably rugged still. The road crossed the swelling river twice, once over a wooden span and once over a stone bridge with graceful arches, both with tolls collected by the villages that served them. With the spring melt, the Crow ran too high for upstream traffic, but rafts of logs or cargo packed in barrels still made their way down on the spate. Pen thought the nimble raft men must be brave to dare the cold waters, and beguiled an hour imagining himself one of their company.

  More than local traffic kept the road a busy one; merchants’ pack trains, small parties of pilgrims, and enclosed wagons were added to the usual farm carts, cows, pigs, and sheep. Three times they passed or were passed by galloping couriers, from towns or the Temple; the latter waved cheerily in return for Pen’s guards’ salutes. Courier, now there was an honorable task a lean, light man might undertake . . . though by the end of that second day’s ride, Pen’s backside was questioning this ambition.

  Nightfall brought them to a town at the confluence with the River Linnet, not fifteen miles from their destination and under its territorial jurisdiction. Although it was probably not possible to get lost following the Linnet’s valley upstream to where it drained the big lake at Martensbridge, Trinker ruled that they dare not risk arriving after the town gates closed, and instead found them impromptu, but free, lodging at the local Lady-school.

  The Lady-school, dedicated to the Daughter of Spring, was not unlike the one in Greenwell that Pen had attended in his youth, being a couple of rooms on the ground floor of the house where the teachers lodged. It was not appointed for pilgrims like the big chapterhouse of the Daughter’s Order last night—where Pen had been able to sell his cheese to the refectory for a substantial addition to his pocket money—but a private bedchamber was cleared for him nonetheless. Pen did not think this was because he was the most honored guest.

  As a prisoner, he had been well treated, but his status was plain. He checked the tiny window, four floors up over the street. If his captors imagined it would hold him, they had reckoned without his slight build or his years spent climbing, either up trees out of reach of Drovo, or in the mountains hunting. He could skin out of their grip in a moment, but—where would he go?

  This was like waiting for the physician, that time he’d broken his arm. Uncomfortable, but there was nothing he could do to hurry events. Except, it seemed, continue on to the mysteries of Martensbridge.

  He lay down and attempted sleep, only to become aware, after a few minutes, that he was sharing the narrow cot with a family of fleas. He flicked, rubbed, turned again. Or maybe a festival of fleas. Would they celebrate all night? He muttered an imprecation as one bit his calf, beginning the banquet.

  “Would you like some help with that?” said Desdemona, amusement lacing her voice.

  Pen clapped his hand over his mouth. “Quieter!” he whispered, alarmed. “Wilrom is sleeping right outside the door. He’ll hear.” And think . . . what?

  Desdemona obligingly whispered, “We can destroy fleas, you know.”

  Pen hadn’t. “Is it permitted?”

  “Not only permitted, but encouraged. We must have done in armies of them, over the years. Vermin are not considered theologically protected, even by the Bastard whose creatures they are. And it is a magic that runs safely downhill, from order to disorder.”

  “Less disorder for my bed, surely.”

  “But great disorder for the fleas,” Desdemona whispered back. Pen’s lips grinned, not by his volition. “The sharpest fall of all, from life to death.”

  That last comment was unsettling, but so were the fleas. “Go ahead,” whispered Pen, and lay still, straining to sense whatever was going to happen.

  A pulse of heat, a slight flush through his body. Its direction was vague, though it seemed more down from his back, into the mattress, than up from his chest toward the ceiling.

  “Twenty-six fleas, two ticks, three beetles, and nine lice,” said Desdemona with a satisfied sigh, like a woman consuming a sweet custard. “And a multitude of moth eggs in the wool stuffing.”

  As the first magic he had ever worked, this lacked glamor. “I thought you didn’t do arithmetic?” said Pen.

  “Huh.” Pen wasn’t sure if her huff was peeved or pleased. “You pay attention, do you?”

  “I’m . . . presently spurred to.”

  “Are you,” she breathed.

  His bedding might be depopulated, but he was still not alone. It also occurred to him, belatedly, that he didn’t know whether demons could lie. Did they always speak truth to their riders, or could they trick them? Could they cut the cloth of fact to fit their goals, leaving out essential information to reverse its effect? Desdemona was the one . . . person, he decided for simplicity he would think of her as a person, he could not ask. Or rather, he could ask, she might answer, but it wouldn’t help.

  Instead, he inquired, “Before Ruchia, were you a, that is, with a Temple sorceress as well?”

  “Helvia was a physician-surgeon,” said the Helvia-voice—he might as well start thinking of her as Helvia—in the reassuringly local accent of Liest. “High in the Mother’s Order.”

  “And I, Amberein, before her,” said the thick Darthacan accent. “In the Temple school in Saone.”

  “I thought you said . . . physicians heal, sorcerers destroy?” said Pen, puzzled anew. “How can you be both?”

  “We can do uphill magic as well, but it is very costly,” said Desdemona.

  “Some healing is done by destroying,” said Amberein. “Stones of the bladder. Reduction of cysts or tumors. Amputations. Many subtler things.”

  “Worms,” sighed Helvia. “You would not believe how many people suffer from worms. Not to mention fleas, lice, and other infestations.” It took a breath, and added, “Which was why, when Helvia’s time ran out, we did not jump to the young physician they had prepared, but to Ruchia. We were so tired of worms. Hah!”

  Before Pen could ask what Ruchia had done to make her so preferable, another voice interjected a comment in a language he did not know. “Who was that?”

  “Aulia of Brajar,” put in Desdemona. “Good Temple-woman. She spoke no Wealdean, only Ibran, though in time you will come to understand her. Be
fore her, Umelan the Roknari.”

  “Roknari!” said Pen, startled. “I thought the Quadrene heretics abjure the Bastard. How came she by a demon in the Archipelago?”

  “It’s a long tale, which I’m sure she will tell you—in tedious detail—when you gain her tongue,” soothed Desdemona.

  I, gain her tongue? It seemed to Pen that she had gained his, for she used it to make what sounded like a tart rejoinder.

  “Can you give me a short tale?” asked Pen.

  “She was born in the Archipelago, taken as a slave in a war raid, bought for a servant by Mira, a famous courtesan in the lagoon city of Adria, who possessed us at the time. Mira was untrained, but clever; we’d found in her our best rider yet. When Mira died, we jumped to Umelan, who ran away back home only to find the ill fate meted out to sorcerers on those islands.”

  Pen’s imagination, briefly stuck on the courtesan part, raced to catch up. “Which is what?” Not that he had any intention of going to those lands.

  “Sometimes they are burned alive, but often, they are taken out to sea and put overboard with a cushion that slowly fills with water and sinks. By the time the sorcerer drowns, the boat will have got far enough away that the demon will have nowhere to jump but to the fishes.”

  Both he and Desdemona shuddered at this picture, Pen fancied, if perhaps for different reasons.

  Pen’s mouth emitted a spate in that strange language, the words unknown to him but the tone of grievance very clear. Umelan adding her views?

  “After her executioners rowed off, but before she was quite drowned, she was spotted by a passing galley from Brajar. The rescue was not much better than the capture, but we were set ashore alive in Brajar and, at a loss for any other course, went supplicant to a house of the Bastard’s Order. It was . . . good, there.” A slight pause, and she added, “For the first time, we were understood.”

  Pen counted up on his fingers. Not the whole tally even yet. “And before, uh, Mira of Adria?”