Penric and the Shaman (Penric & Desdemona Book 2) Read Free Page A

forest tribes, shattered and scattered as much by the passage of time and the progress of the world as by Darthacan arms, never reestablished themselves. Why the restored, if much changed, Wealdean hallow kings had sponsored this antiquarian revival when they had perfectly good Temple sorcerers at their disposal, Penric did not know, although the interested scholar in him felt a sneaking approval.  
    “The shamans’ magic is a human creation, or at least, rising from the world instead of descending, or escaping, from a god as demons do,” Penric went on. “In the old forests, tribal shamans were said to invest their warriors with the spirits of fierce animals, to endow them with that strength and ferocity in battle. The making of a shaman partook of this, only more so. The spirits of animals were sacrificed into others of the same kind, generation after generation, piled up until they became something more, Great Beasts. Invested at last into a person, the spirit of such a creature brought its powers to him not”—he cleared his throat—“not unlike the way a demon of the white god does for a sorcerer. Despite the very different origins of the gifts.”
    Humph , said Desdemona, but did not contradict this.
    As Penric drew breath, the princess held up a stemming hand. “Penric is quite fond of reading, and will happily share all he learns. But perhaps not all at once? Go on, please, Locator.”
    The Grayjay pressed his forehead, as though it ached, and grimaced. “Right. The first the Father’s Order at Easthome was told of this case was after that mess at the funeral, which was late off the mark. We should have been called out when they first found the body. Howsoever. I was dispatched to investigate and report on a suspicious death at the estate of one of the minor branches of the kin Boarford family, about ten miles outside of the capital. Not home of the earl-ordainer, thankfully, although for that I suppose they would have sent a more senior man.
    “As I—eventually—worked out the chain of events, one of the scions of the family, a young man with military ambitions named Tollin kin Boarford, had purchased a wild boar captured alive from some hunters. He’d kept it for some weeks in a sty on the estate. His older brother thought that he had plans for some boar-baiting show, because instead of making any attempt to tame it, he teased it to make it wilder. Although I suppose either plan would have been equally stupid. But when Tollin was found one morning in the sty, shirtless and with his belly ripped open, and the boar bled dry with a knife in its throat, it seemed to the servants and family death by plain misadventure. The boar was butchered and fed to the dogs. Tollin’s body was washed and wrapped and made ready for his funeral rites at the old family temple on the estate, conducted by the local divine.
    “Which was where everything went wrong, because none of the funeral animals signed that any god had taken up his soul, not the Son of Autumn, which would have been expected, not the Bastard, nor any other. As far as his family could tell, he had become a sundered ghost, and no one knew why. The divine, finally , sent for help.”
    But instead, they got this Grayjay , Desdemona quipped. Penric pressed his lips closed.
    “There was not much to see in the sty, and the boar was eaten by then, but I did, with some argument, get the family to allow me to unwrap and examine the body. Where I was apparently the first to notice that, in addition to the ghastly goring of his abdomen, there was a slit of a knife wound just under his left breast. Shifting the event from misadventure to murder.”
    “Huh,” said Pen, impressed.
    “At that point, I reexamined the knife, and determined that it was not only too wide to have made the wound, it was too wide to fit in Tollin’s belt sheath. Not his blade at all. And after a search of the sty, its environs, and pretty much the whole estate, no other knife of the