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

right dimensions was found. Carried off, it seemed, by whoever had stabbed him to the heart.”
    Huh , said Des, less unimpressed. She seized Pen’s mouth to inquire, very much in Learned Ruchia’s cadences, “Could you tell which injury came first, the knife wound or the goring?”
    Oh, now that’s an interesting question , Pen commented, deciding to forgive her for the unauthorized interruption, not least because Oswyl glanced across at him with a shade more respect.
    “I could not. I’m not sure it would have been apparent even if I had been able to see the body when it was first found. But I took the knife and my inquiry to Tollin’s friends. None of them recognized the blade, but at last I learned that Tollin had also been comrades with a royal shaman, one newly invested with his powers. A younger son of the northern kin Wolfcliffs.”
    The princess nodded. “That branch of their kin has been noted for supplying royal shamans since Good King Biast revived the practices, a century before my birth. Or so it was when I last lived at the king’s hall in Easthome.”
    The Grayjay nodded back. “It’s still so. This shaman, Inglis kin Wolfcliff, was said by his friends to have been trying to court Tollin’s sister, without much success. When I went looking for him , I discovered that he had vanished out of Easthome, without leave from his superiors, the day after Tollin’s death. No one knew where or why. They did identify the knife found in the boar as a ritual sort, but with no signs of the uncanny on it.
    “Which is when I persuaded my superiors to issue an order for Inglis’s arrest. And the wherewithal to carry it out, which was harder to extract. Inglis seems to be an ordinary-looking fellow—middling stature, dark hair and eyes, early twenties—of which I found there is a vast brotherhood on the roads this season, none of them well remembered by anyone. Fortunately, he rode a fine flaxen mare, a gift from his family upon the occasion of his investiture I was told, which was noted by every ferryman and inn stable boy from the lower Stork to the Upper Lure all the way to the Crow. Which was where we found the mare, lamed, sold to an inn hoping to resell her to a breeder. And our quarry vanished into air.”
    Penric cleared his throat. “Knowing what you pursued, shouldn’t your superiors at Easthome have requisitioned you a sorcerer before you started out?”
    Oswyl’s jaw tightened. “They did. A sorcerer, six royal guardsmen, and three grooms. Upon the Crow River Road, we had a… strong difference of opinion as to which way Inglis might have fled. Learned Listere held out for his having made for Darthaca or Saone, to the east, to cross the border out of any jurisdiction of the Weald. I thought north, if for the same reason, making for the mountain passes out of these hinterlands into Adria or Carpagamo.”
    The princess raised her chin. “If so, the shaman is out of his reckoning. The passes were blocked by snow a week ago. They don’t normally open again until spring. Unless you think he outraced our late-autumn blizzards?”
    Oswyl’s lips unpressed unhappily. “From the Crow? If so, he would have had to be flying, not walking. My hope is to find him bottled up above your lake somewhere, stranded like a laggard merchant.”
    “So where is your Easthome sorcerer now?” Penric prodded.
    “Halfway to Darthaca, I suppose,” growled Oswyl. “And all the troop with him, as they refused to be divided.”
    That is a very determined Grayjay , Penric observed to Desdemona, to follow his own line though his whole pack hares off without him.
    Or a typical devotee of the Father’s Order , she returned, with a rod up his fundament and an obsession with his own rightness .
    Who is judging by appearances now? Really, the man had just covered, what, four hundred miles between Easthome and Martensbridge, along muddy roads as winter whistled in, pushing ten men to ride as fast as a man alone. And losing