“If you do find this fox—or Magal’s demon howsoever contained—bring it to me unharmed.”
“I’ll try, sir.” Pen hesitated. “What will you do with it?”
Hamo pressed the heels of his hands hard over his eyes, which emerged blinking and reddened. “I have no idea. Yet.” He added under his breath, “And here I thought I was finally going to sleep tonight…”
Penric stretched in his chair, the day’s aches catching up with him, his penalty for sitting down. As Hamo did not at once add more, he rose. “I should go. We mean to start out early.”
Hamo nodded, waving a weary dismissal. “Yes. Thank you.”
“If we find anything more definite, I’ll try to let you know as soon as I can.”
“Please.”
“And if you find anything… I’ll stop back in tomorrow night after we return?”
“Do, yes.”
As Penric reached the door, Hamo spoke again. “Penric…”
“Sir?”
“If this mad murderer, whosever he may prove to be, is still seeking our demon-fox, and you are seeking this same fox… Well, just be careful up in those woods, yes?”
“Ah.” There’s a thought I should have had sooner. “Quite so, Learned.” Pen touched his thumb to his lips in a parting salute, and took his leave.
Penric, Oswyl, and Thala rendezvoused with Baron Wegae, trailed by his porter-and-groom Jons, in the street before his townhouse while the morning air was still dew-damp. They rode through Kingstown in sleepy silence to the north gate, and out it to the main installation of the Royal Society of Shamans. This had once been a farm beyond the city walls, but the town had grown up around it since, the original wattle-and-daub buildings shouldered aside by more substantial structures. The old rustic fences along the street were replaced by an imposing wooden palisade, shielding the Society’s secrets.
They threaded through it all to the menagerie yard, formerly extensive royal stables. Penric had visited here a few days ago at Inglis’s invitation to witness the sacrifice of an elderly and tame lynx spirit into a half-grown lynx cub, on its way to making a great beast rather more desirable than a worm. The young shaman performing the ritual cuts under the close supervision of his elders had been visibly nervous, but the animal had been strangely serene, and Penric had been put in mind of those tales of people on their deathbeds going gladly to their gods. Except messier, Pen supposed.
No bloody rituals going on this morning, but the last of the short night’s cobwebs blew off Penric’s brain as he took in the unexpected group that awaited them. Not just Inglis, but three more, yes, shamans were sitting together on the mounting blocks, holding their horses’ reins and chatting. All dressed for a day in the country like Pen’s party—riding trousers and sturdy boots, with light shirts or sleeveless tunics in anticipation of the day’s heat.
Inglis looked up, waved, and rose to make introductions.
“These are my friends Nath”—a big burly fellow, perhaps Oswyl’s age—“Kreil”—the bouncy-looking young man in question gave a cheery salute—“and Lunet.” The last was a young woman with sandy-red hair and a smattering of freckles across her sharp cheekbones. “They’ve volunteered to help you hunt for your haunted fox, Penric.”
Penric grinned in surprise, instantly envious of the shamanic skills of collaboration, although working alone suited him well for the most part. “Ah, so this is what you went off to find last night. Outstanding idea. Thank you!” Pen took over the task of introducing the Grayjays and Wegae. The shamans, royal pets as they were, seemed not in the least daunted by Wegae’s rank, and Wegae in turn appeared openly fascinated by them. He wasn’t the only one, although Thala stared more covertly. Lunet eyed her with like interest.
They all mounted up and took the road toward the hills, a substantial cavalcade of nine. A lone murderer, however dangerous, must surely be intimidated by these numbers? Penric hoped so. Readily overcome by his curiosity, Pen turned in his saddle and thought, Des, Sight.
Inglis’s wolf was its usual more-than-wolfish self. The burly, dark-haired Nath certainly bore a bear, deceptively placid within him. If the eager Kreil didn’t house a Great Dog, enthusiastic for this outing, Pen would very surprised. Of them all, only the ruddy Lunet lifted her chin and glanced keenly back at him, poised in stillness, instantly conscious of his more-than-gaze. Great Fox, indeed. That might prove handy.
Penric wondered if their Beasts had been matched to their persons in advance, or if the young shamans had taken on aspects of their possessions after acquiring them. Aspirants worked in the menagerie for some time before being paired with their powers, Inglis had mentioned, so perhaps it was more a matter of the two compatible spirits finding each other. Like a person and their god.
Or their demon, Des put in, slyly.
So what does that reveal about me?
You possess the Bastard’s own luck?
Eee. And then wondered how literally true that might be.
Lunet looked as if she might be wondering, too.
Thala rode for a while next to Lunet, the two women quietly talking. At a turn onto a wider road, Thala said, “Well, we have one of each right here. Let’s ask,” and pushed her horse up between Penric and Inglis. Inglis, after a glance back over his shoulder at his foxy colleague, returned the young Grayjay’s look of inquiry.
“I am curious,” she said to the air between them, like a woman fairly dividing a cake. “Which came first, sorcerers or shamans?”
“It had to be sorcerers,” said Penric.
Inglis’s mouth took a noncommittal twist.
Lunet called up, “How can you say? The tradition of shamans in the old forest tribes goes back centuries, maybe millennia, and is lost in the fog of time. The traditions of sorcery can hardly go back farther.”
“Do a few thousand years seem like a long time to you?” asked Penric. “I think that must be an eyeblink, in god-sight.”
“Then no one can really say either one?” prodded Thala.
“I don’t get to it by any historical record, missing or not. I get to it by logic,” said Penric.
Oswyl had taken over Thala’s stirrup-place beside Lunet: the shamaness looked the senior locator up and down with fresh interest. Amusement tinging his voice, he said, “Logic, Learned? I thought that was my Order’s task.”
“Task it might be, but not sole dominion. Think about it. Shamans may create other shamans, through the slow building of Great Beasts, but who created the first shaman? Or the first spirit warrior, for that matter, since the simpler creation likely came before, and the more complicated later, probably through some trial and error.” Penric reflected on this. Wait, maybe not? There seemed an uncomfortable circularity involved. “The period of error must have been a frustrating time, for those involved. Anyway, the gods, and the gifts of the gods, surely came before people.” He hesitated in uncertainty at that last sentence. But this was not the place for the deeper debate on the origins of the gods, in all its subtleties. And heat. He forged on, “Since sorcerers are created by the gift, of sorts, of a demon from the Bastard, those powers must have come first.”
“The oldest forest stories would have it that the first shaman was a blessing of the Son of Autumn,” said Inglis. “No sorcerer required. Those shamanic practices that sorcerers can replicate, and I’ll grant you a few—”
You’d better, thought Pen, recalling his Great Earthworm with, well, not pride exactly, but certainly provisional satisfaction.