Penric's Fox: Penric and Desdemona Book 3 Read online

  Wegae shrugged. “We prefer the house in town, traitorous to my forest-tribe ancestors though it may be to admit it.” His lady smiled and wrapped his arm in hers, comfortingly.

  Penric tried to think of a subtle way to ask, Where were you last night? “Have you been much taken up with this royal launching?” A circling hand-wave indicated the past two weeks of name-day festivities.

  Wegae shook his head. “Only to route around, mostly. But my mother insisted we come tonight. I think my inheritance gratified her almost more than me.”

  “Well, mothers,” Penric offered in prudently vague sympathy. Both his auditors nodded in unison.

  The princess-archdivine’s lady secretary found Pen then, to murmur, “Her Grace is ready to leave now.”

  Pen was forced to make polite introductions and farewells in the same breath. He let the secretary guide him past the hazards of thanks to their highborn hosts, and, safely outside, took his place beside the sedan chair once more. Uphill, there was less breath for gossip, at least on his part, and the same problem with listening ears. So it wasn’t until Llewyn invited him to her rooms that, seated between the two women in the candlelight, he was able to recount his day’s experiences. Despite his weariness, he tried to make it all sound as interesting as possible.

  He must have succeeded, for his superior finally said, mildly, “I did have other plans for you tomorrow.”

  Did have not do, right. “So did I, Your Grace”—though probably not the same ones—“but I’d like to help Oswyl find justice for that poor sorceress if I can. And no one else is speaking for the lost demon. It was a victim, too, in my view.”

  She gave a conceding wave of her beringed hand. “Report to me again tomorrow night, then.”

  Playing on her curiosity had worked, good. Relieved, he signed himself, managed not to yawn in her face, and made his way to his own chamber.

  *

  By the time Penric and Inglis rode out from Easthome at dawn, made arrangements to leave their horses in the hill-village temple’s paddock, discouraged the lay dedicat from tagging along, and returned to the clearing, it was not as early as either had hoped. At least the light was good.

  Beginning from the dried blood patch, infested now by only a few green flies, Penric walked out in a slow spiral, all his senses deployed. No ghosts today, either, and at length he conceded that any chill of unease was being supplied by his own imagination.

  Inglis went off to look for telltale horse droppings or cart tracks, and found some, but, given all the animals and people that had been in and out of here yesterday, they failed to be definitive. Yet another search for where the bowman must have stood to make his killing shots found no special clues. Inglis came back to the center of the clearing, held out an arm toward the stream, and squinted along it. “He shot the woman from somewhere in that arc of woods. But he shot at the fox from here near the body.”

  “If the body was even there yet. I’ll grant you the shot.”

  Inglis shrugged and led some forty paces through the brush to the spot where he’d found the third arrow. The gouge in the ground where it had landed was barely visible. No sign of blood or the struggles of a dying animal.

  “Can you, ah, smell a trail?” Pen asked him.

  “Not exactly. My nose is no keener than any man’s. It’s just something I attend to more closely.”

  As his second sight was granting him nothing, Pen was content to follow Inglis’s first nose. They wandered generally toward the hidden stream, eyes on the ground. The shaman, too, had hunted in his youth; the Raven Range from which his kin hailed was not as breathlessly high as the mountains in the cantons, but they’d been rugged enough. So Pen was not too surprised when Inglis stopped at the streambank, pointed down, and said “Ah,” in a tone of satisfaction.

  Fox prints dappled the mud, though only a few. More useful were a couple of human dents, one of which lay half-atop a pawprint, plus a deep round pock that might have been from a walking stick. “Someone gave chase. Or tracked,” said Inglis.

  Pen tried matching the prints with his own, off to the side, and examined the results. The original footprint was a touch longer, quite a bit wider, and deeper. “Long stride, or running. A heavier man than me.”

  “Most men are, surely.” But Inglis made a similar test on the other side, and allowed, “Heavier than me, as well.”

  “The arrow was undamaged, but he didn’t stop to pick it up,” Pen noted.

  “Might have been dark by then.”

  “Not so dark he didn’t take a long shot at a fast-moving fox. And nearly hit it.”

  “Hm.”

  They picked up the tracks on the other side of the stream. The fox’s were quickly lost, the man’s soon after, although a few broken branches or ambiguous scrapes in the soil led them onward. After about two miles of thrashing through the steep and treacherous undergrowth, Inglis, huffing, plunked down on a fallen log and said, “That’s it for me.”

  Penric joined him, catching his breath and staring around. This tract measured some six or seven miles on a side, giving something like forty or fifty square miles of precipitous green woods. They needed a better plan than blundering around at random.

  Inglis scratched his sweating chin. “So, I gather you are thinking this fox might have picked up your missing demon?”

  Penric opened his hands in doubt. “Not an impossibility. Although any human, no matter how unsavory, would have been a first choice for it. A fox before a bird or squirrel, though.”

  “You once told me that demons always try to jump higher, to a larger or more powerful animal, or person to a more powerful person.”

  “If they can.”

  “What happens if one can’t? If it is forced downward?”

  Penric sighed. “What do you think would happen to you, if someone tried to force your body into a box half its size?”

  Inglis’s brows twitched up. “Nothing very pleasant. Crushed, I suppose. Maybe bits cut off.”

  “Something like that, I gather. Except happening to a mind instead of a body.”

  “But a demon isn’t a material thing. Shouldn’t it be more… foldable?”

  “ ‘Spirit cannot exist in the world without matter to sustain it,’ ” Penric quoted. “Maybe it’s more like… being forced to exist on half the food and water and air you require. Or a shrub transplanted with nine-tenths of its roots amputated. Or I-don’t-know what material metaphor. But this demon, if I understand Hamo aright, contained imprints of least three human minds and lives including, now, Magal’s, together with any animals that went before. That’s not a small demon.”

  “So… somewhere out there is a very smart fox?” He added meticulously, “Assuming the fox.”

  “Smart, mentally mutilated, and insane. Or worse.”

  “Wait. The woman who was murdered is now in the fox?” Inglis considered this. “You might want to add angry to that list.”

  “Angry, bewildered, terrified, the Bastard knows what.” Well, He probably did, at that. Pen hoped the soul of Magal had found deep comfort in His care. The image of Magal… required another caretaker. And Penric was horribly afraid he could guess just who the god had tapped for the task.

  Time to earn your keep, O Learned Divine? said Des, amused. As I recall the Saint of Idau once gave us a warning about that.

  Mm. Pen sighed, not happily. Any suggestions, Des?

  An impression of a shrug. Such manly sports as fox hunts were never ours. Well, Aulia hawked as a girl in Brajar. Litikone set snares, though her most notable weapon was a rusty spear. Rogaska killed more chickens than any fox, but she didn’t need to hunt them farther than her father’s farmyard. Still… She turned Pen’s head. Try over that way.

  “Let’s take a cast up there.” Pen pointed, and with a shrug Inglis rose to follow him. They pulled their way upslope from sapling to sapling, then came out onto a stretch of flatter, less obstructed ground. Penric, for a moment, tried to control his busy mind and just let himself d
rift, or be drawn.

  “Oh,” said Inglis, and his stride lengthened. After a few more paces Pen could hear it too, a muffled whine.

  Near the base of an oak tree, they found the pit-trap, sprung and occupied. Inglis knelt to clear away the disordered concealing branches, and they both peered down. A smell of dubious fish, elderly pork fat, and the sharp reek of fox wafted out to greet them. The trap’s resident cowered and bared its teeth up at them, growling.

  “A fox,” said Pen, “but not our fox.”

  “I can sense that. Hm.”

  The pit did not seem to be freshly dug, but it had been freshly straightened and, of course, freshly baited. And not, evidently, with poisoned bait.

  “Why trap a fox alive?” Pen mused.

  “Keeping the pelt intact?”

  “Fall or winter is the season for good pelts.”

  “Any season will do for farmers warring on vermin,” Inglis noted.

  “Then why not use a snare or an iron trap?”

  They both stood back and frowned down at this new puzzle.

  “Hoy! You there!” a brusque voice yelled.

  Pen’s gaze jerked up to find a man in huntsman’s leathers approaching them, his bow drawn. He scowled more fiercely than the fox. But he hesitated as his auditors failed to run away like surprised poachers.

  Despite this check, he gathered his resolve and went on, “What are you doing trespassing on Pikepool lands? I’ll see you off!”

  Penric, his eyes on the bent bow and trying to make out the fletching on the nocked arrow, scrambled over the blank in his mind and came out with, “Ah, you must be Baron kin Pikepool’s forester! I met Wegae and his willowy wife last night at Princess Llewanna’s dinner. He recommended his woods to my attention. Permit me to introduce myself.” Penric managed a short, polite nod, aristocrat to servant. “Lord Penric kin Jurald.” He elbowed Inglis.

  “Inglis kin Wolfcliff,” Inglis came through, though he cast Pen an eyebrow-lift. That high kin name, certainly, would be recognized by any Wealding. Pen let the notion that they were here by some lordly invitation stand implied.

  “Aye…” The bow lowered, thankfully, although the suspicious glower remained. Arrows that he could see coming were no threat to a sorcerer, but Pen decided he’d rather not reveal his calling just yet. “I’m the baron’s man.”

  “Oh, very good!” said Penric, with a cheer he hoped did not sound too desperate. “Then you can tell us about this trap.”

  The man stared at him anew. “It’s a pit trap. As any foo—man can see.”

  “I see, well, smell you baited it for foxes. Got one, too, very good.”

  “Aye…?”

  “Have foxes been a particular problem around here lately?”

  “Vermin’s always a problem.” Slowly, the man eased the bowstring, un-nocked his arrow, and returned it to his quiver. “We clear them out from time to time.”

  Penric smiled and rubbed his neck. “How many foxes might live in these woods, d’you think, Inglis?”

  By his expression, Inglis was not following this start, but he shrugged. “You might find one to three on a square mile, usually, for land like this. More this time of year, when the new pups take to the field.”

  “So… anywhere from fifty to a couple of hundred? My word. That’s a lot of foxes,” Pen marveled, trying for an air of city enthusiasm. The bowman winced, though whether at Pen’s tone or his arithmetic was unclear. “I had no idea. You certainly have your work cut out for you, forester! And what would your name be?”

  The man gave it up reluctantly: “Treuch.”

  Penric backed up from the pit and waved as though inviting the man to partake of a repast. “Well, don’t let us impede your work. Carry on, Treuch!”

  On the way, Pen managed a closer look at the fletching bristling from the quiver. Similar to the arrows they’d found yesterday, but not obviously identical. Unhelpful.

  Do you make anything of him, Des?

  Seems very tense. But he would be, encountering trespassers who outnumber him, and younger men at that.

  Treuch might be any age from his mid-thirties to his mid-forties—a forester’s life was no easy one. He seemed about Inglis’s height and weight, if more bowed. But he donned a pair of thick leather gauntlets and lowered himself into the pit with considerable agility, first trapping the animal between his knees and muzzling its bite with a swift wrapping of rawhide cord, then binding its feet and lifting it out. Inglis, unasked, bent to help in this task. The fox, which had snarled at the huntsman, shrank from the wolf-shaman and whimpered.

  Treuch managed a gruff, “Thankee,” as he clambered back out. He rebaited the trap with some offal from his pack, then arranged the concealing branches and leaves once more. Slinging the squirming animal over his shoulder, he stood and regarded his unwanted visitors.

  “Best you see yourselves out of the woods, and watch your step when you do. I’ve some snares set about as well. But Dorra, the alewife up at Weir village, makes a good brew. If you go out that way, likely you can quench a gentlemanly thirst there speedily enough.”

  “Good advice,” said Pen, “on both counts. Shall we wend our way to Dorra, Inglis?”

  “If you say so,” said Inglis.

  “Good hunting,” Pen called over his shoulder as they tromped off in the opposite direction to the fox-burdened forester.

  They kept walking, carefully, only until the man was out of earshot before stopping in mutual accord.

  “You want to follow that fellow?” asked Inglis quietly.

  “Absolutely.”

  They turned and retraced their steps, much more silently.

  Treuch made his way through more of the trackless stretch, then turned onto a trail and strode faster. Penric and Inglis kept just out of sight behind him, although they almost came to grief when he turned aside to check a snare. They hunkered down until he returned to the path. After about two miles, he came to an open area. Pen and Inglis stopped at the shaded verge, concealing themselves in an overgrown copse.

  An old stone building, half castle, half farmhouse, rose tall and brown on the far side of the wide cleared area. Some thatch-roofed houses of wattle-and-daub in various states of disrepair clustered at its feet, along with a stable set in an L around its own courtyard. Wood fences pastured a pair of oxen and a few horses. A better-mended fence set off a large kitchen garden.

  The forester disappeared around the side of the stable, then returned in a few minutes, foxless. He trudged off to the stone house and let himself in through a heavy oak door. The yard fell silent.

  The sheer face of the manor house boasted very few eyes, its windows small, deep set, and, as nearly as Pen could tell at this distance, very dirty. “Do you sense anyone else about?”

  Inglis nodded toward a chimney in one of the daub houses, venting smoke from a cooking fire. “Likely people in there.”

  “Hm. Well, they’ll be busy about their tasks. Let’s see what he did with that fox.”

  Inglis shrugged but followed behind Penric, his curiosity, too, overcoming his prudence.

  The stable had once been meant for more horses, judging by the number and generous proportions of the stalls. All its current residents seemed to be out in the pasture, leaving several doors hanging open or half open. Only one stall had both the top and bottom halves of its door latched.

  Gently, trying to make no squeak, Pen unlatched the top and swung it part open. He blinked to try to adjust his eyes to the shadows, then gave up and thought, Des, light.

  Some half-a-dozen, no, seven unhappy foxes were imprisoned within. Some lay in the straw panting in apparent exhaustion, others crouched as far from their fellows as they could get, growling. Several were bleeding from fox fights. The hostile atmosphere, Pen thought, was much the same as one might get by jamming seven sorcerers and their demons into a similar space.

  “That,” Inglis muttered, “is a decidedly odd thing to do with foxes.”

  “Really. If that fellow sp
oke the truth about thinning the local vermin, they should all be pelts tacked to the stable wall by now, waiting for the women servants to get around to scraping them.”

  “So what’s next? I might add, my probationary status with the Fellowship would not be helped by my being either arrested for trespassing, or for getting into a fight trying to avoid being arrested for trespassing.”

  “Yet… hm. You have a valid point. We need Oswyl up here in order to go much further.”

  “For what? It’s not against the law to trap foxes. Especially by a forester on his own lord’s land.”

  “All right. That’s a problem, too.” Convincing the somewhat rigid Oswyl of… what? Even Pen wasn’t sure.

  Inglis snorted softly. “It does look like, if you were craving to survey all the foxes on this land, someone seems to be doing it for you. Might be easier to stand off and wait.”

  “Except there is one fox out there I’d rather no one catch but me.”

  “I wonder… if anyone could catch it but you?”

  “Hm.” Which led directly to the uncomfortable question of the state of mind of the lost demon, trapped in a lower animal that could not support it. It might (if indeed in a fox, not yet proved) make a very shrewd fox indeed. Or it might make for a drowning agony of confusion and despair. Easily mistaken for a sick fox by anyone, and thereby hung a whole host of other hazards.

  “I’d want to find out what Oswyl has uncovered today, first,” said Inglis. “Before…”

  He didn’t complete the thought, but the heartening implication seemed to be that if Pen wanted to try something chancy in aid of all this, he might not have to do it alone. Pen bit his lip, trying to think. They were supposed to meet Oswyl in town for dinner, and there relate the events of each of their days. The light was leveling. By the time they made it back to the hill village of Weir, collected their horses, and rode down into Easthome, it would be well on toward evening.

  “I think,” said Pen slowly, “we’d better withdraw for tonight, before someone catches us skulking around. Come back tomorrow in better force.”

  Inglis nodded agreement, and they turned to slip away into the woods. At the last moment Pen stepped back, unlatched the lower door to the stall, and edged it open. Inglis raised his brows but did not comment until they had reached the cover of the copse once more. As they paused to look back, they saw one rusty streak, then another, flit around the corner of the stable and speed for the forest.