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 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 his race and chase by very little margin. No wonder he seemed vexed.
Penric asked cautiously, “What exactly are the powers of this shaman, Locator? As you and your Order in Easthome understand them to be? If I am to be assisting you in this arrest?” Or making it for you, sounds like.
Oswyl turned out his chapped hands. “Shamans are said to have great powers of persuasion or compulsion—in the strongest form, to be able to lay a geas upon a person that can last for weeks. The weirding voice, they call it.”
Penric’s lips twitched. “Sounds as if the hallow king should be making them royal lawyers, not royal warriors.”
This got him a grim glare from the Grayjay. No jokes, right. Oh, well.
“I am also told that this voice does not work on sorcerers. Or rather, does not work on their demons.”
That is actually correct, murmured Desdemona. Remind me to tell you of the one Ruchia met on one of her missions to Easthome, who tried to seduce her.
Did he succeed?
Yes, but not for that reason…
With some difficulty, Penric wrenched his attention back to the Grayjay. Later. And very much not only for the salacious tale.
“It’s unclear to me,” continued Oswyl, frowning in untrusting speculation at Penric, “what happens should the weirding voice fail with the demon but work on the sorcerer.”
I will save you, Penric! Desdemona promised, in a dramatic tone. …Unless, like Ruchia, you should not care to be saved.
That one, Pen ignored. “What else?” asked Pen.
“Like their ancestors, they are supposed to be savage and merciless in close combat.”
Hence the six royal guardsmen, Pen supposed. Now on their way to Darthaca. How could he face down a desperate murderer possessing, presumably, trained martial skills, in a maniacal battle-frenzy? Not that Pen didn’t possess certain powers of speed and evasion, not to mention distraction, in his own right, but… he thought perhaps he might take his hunting bow along. The one with the heavy draw and the really long range.
Sound thinking, said Des. I should not in the least care to replace you with whatever stray passerby happened to be around if you became careless.
When their person died, a demon, unbound by this dissolution, perforce jumped to another nearby. Temple rites for a dying sorcerer assured that the approved recipient would be prepared and standing ready. Alas that not every sorcerer died to schedule… Could you jump to this shaman?
No. He’d be full-up.
Huh. I suppose that would leave the Grayjay…
Desdemona shuddered, delicately.
Confident that his demon would do everything in her very considerable powers to keep him alive—and, Pen confessed to himself (and us, put in Des), stirred to keen curiosity by all this lurid tale—he straightened on his stool, preparing to volunteer the services that everyone here so clearly was about to ask of him. But the Grayjay was going on.