Knot of Shadows, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Books by Lois McMaster Bujold
Knot of Shadows
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright 2021 © by Lois McMaster Bujold
Cover art and design by Ron Miller, 2021
Books by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Vorkosigan Series
Falling Free
Shards of Honor
Barrayar
The Warrior’s Apprentice
The Vor Game
Cetaganda
Ethan of Athos
Borders of Infinity
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance
Memory
Komarr
A Civil Campaign
Diplomatic Immunity
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
CryoBurn
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
The Chalion Series
The Hallowed Hunt
The Curse of Chalion
Paladin of Souls
Penric & Desdemona
“Penric’s Demon”
“Penric and the Shaman”
“Penric’s Fox”
“Masquerade in Lodi”
“Penric’s Mission”
“Mira’s Last Dance”
“The Prisoner of Limnos”
“The Orphans of Raspay”
“The Physicians of Vilnoc”
The Assassins of Thasalon
“Knot of Shadows”
The Sharing Knife Tetralogy
Volume One: Beguilement
Volume Two: Legacy
Volume Three: Passage
Volume Four: Horizon
“Knife Children"
Other Fantasy
The Spirit Ring
Short Stories
Proto Zoa
Nonfiction
Sidelines: Talks and Essays
Knot of Shadows
It was the season of cold rains and ship-capsizing winds, when the port and city of Vilnoc drew in upon itself, and duke of Orbas decamped to his inland winter capital. Penric savored the quiet period and its reduced interruptions upon his studies, for all that his household complained about the chill. He regularly irritated them by countering with descriptions of his boyhood winters in the distant Cantons, mountain snows drifting higher than his head, which had once prompted his wife, sniffing through a pink nose, to snap that he must have been a very underfed and undersized child.
He smiled across the breakfast table at Nikys now, but she was occupied with their infant son Wyn fussing in her lap, so the warmth was wasted. Pen applied himself instead trying to charm their three-year-old daughter Rina into eating her olives, nutritious, cheap, and abundant in this country and so presented with every meal. They were, Pen conceded, an acquired taste, and even an offered counting game with the pits could not persuade her to consume more than a couple, her face screwing up as he manfully did not laugh.
A loud and urgent knocking at the street door upon the atrium penetrated even to this back room, and their housemaid Lin paused in her serving to ask, “Shall I answer that, Learned?”
Pen overcame an impulse to pretend he wasn’t home, and sighed, “Yes.”
As she trotted off, he leaned back and thought, Des? What do we have out there?
His resident demon’s bodiless senses extended, giving him that by-now-familiar doubled vision of the world: what he could see with his human eyes overlaid with her profounder perceptions; dimensions multiplied, walls transparent, souls burning like multicolored lanterns. It no longer gave him vertigo, much.
Young man. No malice, but upset. The sense of a shrug. Winded. The rest, I expect, he will tell us himself momentarily.
Indeed. Following some muffled negotiation with Lin, the echoing pair of footsteps tracked Penric-ward. He didn’t even bother hoping this untimely panting caller was for Nikys or her mother Idrene. The latter turned to receive a suddenly shy Rina clambering into her grandmotherly lap as the stranger followed Lin through the door.
The lad was a leggy maybe-fourteen, of the darker brick in the wide range of local skin colors, with bright brown eyes that sought Penric anxiously. More tellingly, he wore the green tabard of a dedicat of the Mother’s Order. Pen, straightening, inhaled and fixed an unfelt smile on his face in return for his bobbed bow and breathless, “Learned Penric, sir?”
“You’ve found me,” Pen said neutrally. Urgent messages from the Vilnoc hospice never presaged anything much fun, not for him.
A jerky relieved nod, and his speech tumbled on. “Master Tolga sent me to bring you. We have a very strange patient, very strange. She wants you to see him.” The lad stared apprehensively at the Temple sorcerer, alarming to make demands upon, but then, his medical superior had to be equally alarming to disobey. There wasn’t the least merit in Penric relieving his feelings by snipping at him.
Aye, save it for Tolga, advised Des. She’ll give you as good as she gets.
You needn’t sound as if you relish the prospect.
“So,” Pen said. “What is so very strange about this particular patient?”
“That’s the thing, sir. He was found yesterday floating in the harbor. Three-days-drowned corpse, everyone thought, all bloated and everything. I saw him. They brought him in to us to hold in our morgue till someone could be found to identify him. But before dawn, there was all this banging on the morgue door—from the inside—and when they opened it, he was up and stumbling around, shouting and moaning. Nobody could get any sense out of him, and he tried to fight us, so we finally had to tie him up. And Master Tolga sent me to get you, because she said this just wasn’t right.” He nodded heartfelt endorsement of the sentiment.
Comatose persons had been mistaken for dead by distraught kin and friends before, Pen knew, though not as often as lurid tales about premature burials would have it. But… by a physician as experienced and subtle as Tolga?
The dedicat licked his lips, and pressed, “She said not to come back without you.”
Tolga knew better than to tax him for ordinary medical affairs, or even critical medical affairs. Therefore, this was not… ordinary.
Pen climbed reluctantly to his feet. “I’ll get my shoes and cloak.”
Nikys offered him a sympathetic but firm buck-up-dear smile as he kissed her and made his way out. Army widow—her ideas of duty, whether military or Temple, tended to be resolute. He couldn’t disappoint her touching faith in him, could he now.
Besides, he was beginning to be curious.
* * *
Driving low scudding clouds before it, the wind channeling up from the harbor was gray and damp, not quite actively raining. Despite all Pen’s bragging about his youth in the Cantons he was glad to pull his wool cloak, the work of Nikys’s hands, tighter about himself. He followed along beside the dedicat through the Vilnoc streets, his longer legs keeping easy pace with the youth’s quick, anxious stride.
The main chapterhouse and hospice of the Mother’s Order lay diagonally across town from Penric’s street, where the slope began to rise out of the silty river valley. The merchant’s mansion bequeathed a generation ago had been readily altered to its new purpose: the old living quarters to administrative and physicians’ offices, the apothecary’s workroom, and dormitories and a refectory for the staff who lived in; the adjoining warehouse to patient wards, treatment rooms, a laundry, and other utilitarian needs, with a new well dug in the courtyard to supply all. The front door was kept open day and night, in honor of the Order’s vows to turn no one away, though it did have porters to gate in visitors and supplicants.
It was a measure of Master Tolga’s concern that she had come down to meet her courier’s return in the entryway. She nodded satisfaction at the sight of his prize, Penric, who cast her and her House a polite five-fold tally of the gods: a touch to forehead, lips, navel, groin, and heart, with the extra tap of the back of his thumb to his lips in honor of, or prayer to, his own sworn god the Bastard, fifth and white. She returned the greeting with a quick palm to her navel in devotion to her goddess the Mother of Summer.
Tolga was a slight woman, aging but still straight, gray hair bound back out of the way, her long tunic and green sash augmented today with a loose coat against the chill. Ordinary at first glance, a certain intensity to her features and gaze betrayed her close-trained wits. She turned that gaze now upon her guest—guests.
Consultants, Des put in. We should fetch a fee for this, you know.
Shh. Let’s see what we’re up against, first.
“Learned Penric. Madame Desdemona,” she greeted them politely—Pen had trained her to acknowledge his invisible demon, which tended to put Des into a good and more cooperative mood. “Thank you so much for coming promptly. Phylos described our problem?”
“In brief.”
She nodded and motioned Pen within, adding to her dedicat, “Attend.” He followed, his dutiful expression barely masking keen curiosity. Pen wondered if he was a candidate to apprentice as a future physician.
“I think it will be quickest to just show you,” she said over her shoulder as she led through the main courtyard and under the archway to the former warehouse. “I have, well, more than one possible diagnosis in mind, but they all have defects. Head injury is ruled out, there was no damage to his skull or scalp or even skin. Some bizarre stroke seems possible.”
“Many strokes throw up bizarre-seeming symptoms,” Pen agreed.
“Yes, but dead yesterday, alive today isn’t usually one of them.” She cleared her throat. “I’d been considering an autopsy to try to determine if the cause of death was really drowning, as first seemed obvious, but I expect he would protest. He awoke, or, or whatever, quite combative, in a clumsy way.” Her flattened lips concealed an unnerved tension.
Demonic possession was another rare diagnosis that rose readily to Penric’s mind. He’d seen such a case some years ago in Lodi, in a patient also fished up from the sea. But unquestionably alive at the time. Pen would know at a Sighted glance if this was another.
Tolga guided him not to the morgue, but into a patient chamber allotted mostly to a dozen crippled old indigent men, some brought in to be healed, some to die. For a beggar, Pen was not entirely sure if it was a better death than in an alley or under a bridge; death was never a comfortable process, despite cots and sheets and usually overworked attendants, and it took longer here. More than one man was tied to his cot with cloths, as gently as possible, to prevent injury from falling out, and more than one was moaning about it. So his human eyes did not distinguish his target immediately. Tolga came to a halt at the end of one such cot, gesturing.
All right, this man was different, no more than middle aged, probably much better fed though it was hard to be sure with the unnatural bloating. His flesh swelled around the ties at his wrists and ankles. Really, any corpse under water long enough to look like that should be more fish-nibbled, and he wasn’t. His drifting eyes fixed for a moment on Pen, and his groans became louder cries.
Des, Sight.
Even with Des’s senses at full stretch, it took Pen a baffled moment to sort out what they were looking at. Not the doubled and intertwined bright colors of man and demon, no, that was instantly apparent. Only a single blurred and gray soul twisted within the man’s body.
Just… not the original one.
Aye, ghost, said Des, almost as taken-aback as Pen. A sundered one to be sure, not much eroded yet by time or it wouldn’t have had the strength to effect this.
So, possession of a sort after all—but not demonic.
You know what this must mean, don’t you? Des added. It was her turn to be, unusually, unnerved. Pen shared her shock.
Lips thinning, he circled the cot to examine the man more closely. While he was at it, he dropped his Sight down in to check the lungs for signs of drowning or other material obstructions, which was going to save Tolga some fretting over an autopsy. None, though the throat was swollen from the inside, as though a lethal allergic reaction lingered. No sign of hives with it, internally or externally. An odd lack of any revealing stenches.
Have you seen this before, Des? Imprinted with ten prior human lives, four of them oath-sworn Temple sorceresses of which two had been sorceress-physicians, the depth of his demon’s experience was vast.
No. Learned Aulia of Brajar was twice called out in our career together to examine suspected cases, but both proved false. None ever came in the way of Learned-and-Masters Amberien of Saonne or Helvia of Liest in the course of their medical rounds, either. Learned Ruchia of Martensbridge had other duties. Des reflected. We were taught about it five times in seminary, however. The last one, you were with us.
Back in the great university at Rosehall, where Pen had taken his training as a Temple divine, it had been only a single afternoon’s lecture, because real instances were expected to be very rare. He remembered it vividly nonetheless. Death magic. Or death miracle—the distinction was a matter of careful theological reasoning. Whether it was a distinction without a difference had been a matter for late-night student debate, not much aided by the beer.
Judging from the garbled noises, this dead soul in this dead body was beyond forming words. No clues to be gained from interrogation there, or Tolga would already have gathered some, bewildering as they would have been. Though really, she should have noted the lack of a heartbeat or pulse, however faint, but maybe she just couldn’t believe what she wasn’t seeing.
Pen straightened, and said to the hovering Tolga, “Yes. I know what this is.” She huffed provisional relief, but then eyed him more narrowly. He glanced around the chamber; not every man there was too far gone to watch and listen in worry. “Let’s go somewhere quiet to talk. This will take some explaining.” And he wasn’t, he realized glumly, going to be done at that point.
They walked back out to the courtyard, Phylos tailing. Tolga surveyed the scene. It was the busiest hour of the morning: acolytes escorting patients to be treated or bathed, dedicats hurrying in to change soiled bedding, another physician trailing a pair of apprentices into a sick chamber, lecturing as he strode, the far gate opened for a cart and men bringing in firewood, the creaking well windlass getting a noisy workout, its nearby benches filled with gossiping laundresses waiting with their buckets.
“My writing cabinet, I think. Phylos, bring us tea there.” As her energetic novice ducked his head and wheeled, she added, “Bring enough for three,” which made his shoulders hitch up in gratification. He scampered ahead of them back through the archway.
Penric followed Tolga up the stairs and along the second-floor gallery to the chamber she shared with three other physicians, their four writing desks shoved together in the middle, the walls lined with shelves crammed with records, codices, and scrolls. Thankfully her chamber mates were all out on duty at the moment. Pen wondered what other duties Tolga was neglecting this morning for her mystery case; no doubt her colleagues were accustomed to taking up the slack for one another. By the time she had dragged three chairs together, the breathless Phylos was back with the tea on a tray, obviously not wanting to miss a moment.
Tolga let him serve the clay beakers around as she settled back and said, “So, Learned Penric. Was I right? There is something uncanny at work here?”
“Very. And rare even for the uncanny. The first thing I should tell you, I suppose, is that your patient didn’t drown. Nor did he come back to life this morning. What lies on that cot is still a corpse, animated by a sundered spirit. So not one dead man, but two.”
She blinked, a faint gasp escaping her lips. Phylos bent forward in open-mouthed fascination.
“I did not know such a thing was possible, outside of midnight tales,” said Tolga. Her glance at Pen seemed to reconsider his own possessed, or possessing, state.
“Most such tales are overblown and unlikely, but they do have a real root. Somewhere in or near Vilnoc, probably night before last if your man was found yesterday, someone worked a spell of death magic. Or a prayer of death magic, as it’s proved in the event. Which was answered by my god.” Which dropped the thorny matter squarely into Penric’s lap, as the senior Temple authority for sorcery in Vilnoc. No shoving this one off on the Mother’s Order, alas.
“Most commonly, it’s supposed to happen when some desperate person, all other avenues of justice blocked, prays for the death of someone guilty of some deep villainy; and offers up their own life in payment for the deed. If the white god hears and agrees, He sends His dedicated death demon to snatch both souls. The evil target is supposed, or at any rate imagined, to go with the demon to the Bastard’s hell, to be boiled down to chaos and utterly destroyed, not to join with any god. Which, when you think it through, is much like ordinary sundering, only faster.
“What happens to the supplicant’s soul is, er, argued. It’s said the funeral animals often sign that it’s gone on to a god, usually but not always the Bastard. Rarely, they do sign that it’s sundered. If there’s any underlying pattern to that fate, it seems to be visible only to god-sight.”
Penric drank tea and leaned forward; his fascinated listeners leaned too, as though they were drinking in deep secrets. Which Pen supposed they were, but they had a professional need to know only second to his own.
“So. This means a lot of complicated things. First, that there must have been another such emptied corpse made night before last. Often the supplicant’s body is found with other incriminating evidence of the spell-casting, or spell-asking, so it’s obvious which of the pair was which. If not, it can be hard to tell, unless the target villain’s villainy was known.
