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 he 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.”