Penric's Demon Read Free

great power. She was on her way to her Order’s main house in Martensbridge, to make some report, and seek aid in her illness for, for handling the creature. Or handing it on, in the event of her death. The Bastard’s people have some rituals to control this procedure, with which I am, ah, not familiar. Not exactly my god.”
    The sinking feeling was turning into a stone. “I’ve never met a sorcerer before.” A choking arose in his throat, and without his volition his mouth added, “Well, now you are one, blue-eyed boy!” The tart cadences of the dying divine seemed to echo in the words; then the choking feeling slid back, as if the effort had exhausted it. He clapped his hand over his mouth and stared at Lurenz in terror. “I didn’t say that!”
    Lurenz had jerked back, glaring. “You had better not be trying on some jape, boy!”
    Pen shook his head violently, suddenly afraid to speak.
    Low voices from the hallway rose in sharp argument. The door banged open, and Pen’s mother barged through, yanking her arm from the grip of one of the Temple guards Pen had met on the road. Lord Rolsch, following, held up a stern hand that daunted the man from trying to grab her again. Learned Lurenz rose and quelled the altercation by motioning the guardsman back, shaking his head in a mix of negation and assurance.
    “You’ve awoken! Thank the gods!” The senior Lady Jurald rushed to the bedside and seemed about to fling herself on Pen, but then, to his relief, stopped short. She clutched the sleeve of Lurenz’s robe, instead, tugging it in her urgency. “What has happened to him? Can you tell yet?”
    Rolsch detached her from the divine and restrained her, but after a worried glance down at Pen, turned a face almost as anxious as hers upon Lurenz. They both seemed startlingly changed from this morning’s ceremonial tidiness, though still in the same best clothes. Lady Jurald’s face was puffy, her eyes red-rimmed, her hair awry with random wisps escaping from her braids. Rolsch looked exhausted, too, his face . . . unshaven?
    This isn’t this morning anymore , Pen realized at last. This is tomorrow . . . today . . . oh gods. Had he slept the sun around . . . ?
    Lurenz, not a man to shirk a painful duty, captured Lady Jurald’s fluttering hands and straightened up into his most grave and fatherly pose. “I am so sorry, Lady Jurald.” His nod took in Rolsch as well. “It is just as we feared. Your son has been possessed by, or it seems rather, of , a demon of the white god. It revealed itself to me plain a moment ago.”
    Rolsch flinched; Pen’s mother gasped, “Lady of Summer help us! Can nothing be done?”
    Pen, now sitting up against the headboard, stared down at his body in alarm. A demon of the Bastard, inside him? Where inside him . . . ?
    Lurenz moistened his lips. “It is not as bad as it could be. The demon does not appear to be ascendant—it has not yet seized control of his body for itself. I am told that such a wrenching transference disrupts or weakens it for some time, before it becomes established in or, or accustomed to, its new abode. If Lord Penric is firm of will, and obeys, ah, all his holy instructions, there may yet be a way to save him.”
    “They go into people,” Rolsch tried; “There ought to be a way for them to go out.” He undercut this tentative optimism by adding, “Besides the person dying, of course.”
    Another nod from Lurenz, altogether too casual in Pen’s opinion. “As the unfortunate Learned Ruchia did. Which is how Lord Penric came to be in this predicament.”
    “Oh, Pen, why ever did you . . . ?” his mother flung at him.
    “I . . . I didn’t . . .” Pen’s hands waved. “I thought the old lady was sick!” Which had been, well, not wrong . “I was just trying to help!” He shut his mouth abruptly, but no strange force rose in his throat to add a sharp comment.
    “Oh, Pen ,” moaned his mother; Rolsch rolled his eyes in