Pen stared too. There was scarcely a patch of skin unmarred by red scars, brown scabs, or sticky red lines, with angry pink welts of flesh puffing up between. Double that for the trip back to Easthome, and the man would be flayed. Inglis found a bare spot and lined up the edge, and Penric thought, Des, lend me Sight.
The trembling blade sliced, skin split red, and Pen’s teeth twinged in sympathetic echo. The view was not much different from his unaided vision, except that Inglis’s welling blood bore a strange silver sheen, like moonlight rippling off a wolf’s pelt. He stropped the knife up and down, coating every inch. The spirit-wool moved with it, trailing smoke that circled back and settled on the blood. Pen tried not to think of flies swarming on carrion. But the spirit did, indeed, seem to draw nourishment from the strange feast, its density thickening as the blood dried and the silver sheen died.
No, indeed. I don’t think our blood would serve the same, murmured Des. As Inglis’s fingers started to clench again, Pen leaned forward and wrapped his hand around the shaman’s. “I’ll just be having that back now. For safekeeping.”
After a brief moment of tension, Inglis let his fingers grow slack, and Pen pried the hilt out of his grip. Oswyl waited sword in hand, not yet standing down.
Inglis choked out, “Don’t sheathe it till the blood is fully dry. It won’t take long. The brown rubs right off with a cloth.”
“Right,” said Pen, and waited. The trailing smoke seemed to withdraw into the main body of the bound spirit. The sticky turned to crumbly, a few passes on the thighs of Penric’s trousers brushed it away, and he slid the gleaming steel out of sight again. Des let the vision of Tollin’s ghost disappear, a debatable relief.
Breakfast was a quieter meal, as the house’s children had not yet returned, although the servant girl had. The six guests, or five guests and one prisoner, were fed on oat porridge with butter, cheese, barley bread, and autumn apples. The dogs loitered lazily by the doors, not enticed by the meatless repast. Conversation was desultory and practical. But Gallin and Gossa seemed very aware of Inglis, and not as a criminal.
Penric had to agree, Inglis had made a terrible criminal. His heart wasn’t in it at all. Whatever visions of heroic capture of a villain had beguiled Pen on the ride here, the event had been sadly disappointing. Though if stupid panic is what’s wanted, there’s your man, muttered Des.
I doubt I would have done much better, if I’d killed my best friend by mistake with my new powers, Pen thought back.
I wouldn’t have let you. Nothing remotely like that has happened to a rider of mine… Des seemed to hesitate. For a very, very long time.
Your argument nibbles its own tail, I think?
Humph. But she settled again.
The guard sergeant asked Oswyl, “Should we prepare for the road, sir? We need to see to securing an extra horse.”
Oswyl set down his spoon and sat back. “If we can do nothing more here, we should depart, yes.”
“You are most welcome to stay longer,” put in Acolyte Gallin, with studied emphasis. “A day or so more will not matter.”
“Thank you, Acolyte, but I must disagree. Every day we linger risks us being caught by the next snow.”
Pen disagreed with both. Might a day or two more here make all the difference, to some?
Gallin bit his lip. “Learned Penric, I would like to speak to you apart. About some Temple matters that concern me.”
As a Grayjay, Oswyl was just as much a servant of the Temple as Penric or Gallin, but he permitted Pen to be abstracted from the table with no more than a dry glance Pen’s way. The guards looked alarmed to be thus deprived of whatever magical protection they imagined Pen to be providing them, but even if Inglis, Pen didn’t know what…weirded them all to sleep and hobbled off, he wouldn’t even be able to get as far as the stable before Pen caught him again.
Gallin took Pen to his parlor-study and closed the door, gesturing Pen to sit. When they were knee to knee, he lowered his voice and said directly, “I prayed for help. Are you it?”
Pen sighed unease. “If so, no One has told me. I do not suffer prophetic dreams.” He would add, Thank the gods, but that seemed to fall under the heading of what his mother had used to call coaxing lumps.
“Still, the gods are parsimonious, they say.”
“I understand your drift, I suppose. A Grayjay who hates to be late has arrived at the last hour, bringing me, just in time to intersect a shaman who was running away. One need not be delusory to think something is expected of us.” If Inglis had been in command of his powers, the shaman’s role would be obvious, but then, if he’d been in command of his powers, he could have cleansed Tollin’s soul on the spot back at Easthome, and be doing, well, who knew what who knew where by now. Pen’s own role so far reminded him of those caravan guards mustered in a mass not to fight off bandits, but to dissuade them from attacking in the first place. Which, he had to admit, was by far the best imaginable use of a force of arms.
“Are Inglis’s powers truly broken, as he claimed?”
Penric hesitated. “His powers appear to me to be intact. Only his guilt and distraught mind seem to be blocking his full access to them.”
“Can you do something about that? With your powers?”
“The natural directions of my skills are to mar, not to mend. And they work on things, not minds. Mainly.” And Inglis’s worked on minds, not things. A peculiar reciprocity, now that Pen considered it.
Gallin’s fingers pulled at each other. “Then perhaps it’s not your skills as a sorcerer that are wanted, but your skills as a divine. Perhaps you are the one meant to give him spiritual counsel?”
Penric was taken aback. “That… wasn’t a subject I spent much time on at seminary. It’s a rather horrible joke, if so.”
Gallin half-laughed. “That’s no proof it wasn’t from your god. More the reverse.”
And so the facetious brag he’d made to Oswyl, about being a divine five-fold, curled back to bite him now. Of all the tasks he’d imagined undertaking on the Grayjay’s wolf-hunt, whether as sorcerer or bowman-hero, sage counselor wasn’t even on the list.
So, murmured Des. Now we see why you are so quick to leave your braids in your saddlebags.
That wasn’t it! he began to argue back, and stopped. He raised his face to Gallin’s, again. “You’ve served here for many years. You knew Scuolla, as a friend and as a shaman. Surely you must be better fitted for such a task?”
Gallin shook his head. “Friend, yes, I hope so. But I can’t say as I ever understood what he did with his dogs, except to observe that there seemed no malice in it, or in him. But you and Inglis kin Wolfcliff, you are both brothers in the uncanny. You see things veiled from me. Maybe you can see the way out of this tangle, too.”
Penric cleared his throat, embarrassed. “I admit, I had an idea or two. But it was just for things to try. Not any kind of wisdom. Oswyl thought it high foolishness, in fact.”
“Locator Oswyl wants to leave, I gather. Can you not overrule him?”