“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. Before 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.”