Penric's Labors, page 2
They angled through narrow shadowed streets and alongside translucent emerald canals, the margins of their enclosing pale stone walls stained dark by the rise and fall of tides. Their warm green scent permeated the air, distinctive but not unpleasant. The route led over five bridges, and through a couple of lively squares colorful with market hawkers, before the opening light and screeching of gulls marked them as coming out by the seaside.
Threading past bollards, quays, docks, a private shipyard—Pen could just glimpse the walls of the big state shipyard beyond, source of Lodi’s famous war galleys—they turned into another street and square. A four-story building in warm gray stone flanked a whole side, and the lad led them through the thick wooden doors, one leaf propped open for the day. A porter rose from his stool, identified Tebi at a glance, and waved them on, though his gaze lingered curiously on Penric, who cast him a polite blessing in passing.
On the second floor, past the lair of an apothecary, Tebi knocked on the doorjamb of another writing cabinet: smaller, more cluttered, and less elegantly appointed than that of an archdivine. “Master Linatas?”
The man within turned in his chair, his leathery face animating at the sight of his messenger. He was a thick-bodied, muscular fellow, salt-and-pepper hair cut in an untidy crop, wearing a practical green smock shabby with wear and washings. The braids of a master physician hung not from his shoulder, but from a brass stand on his desk. “Good, you’re back.” A glance at Pen, and he lumbered to his feet. He still had to look up, his eyes widening slightly. “Goddess bless us.”
Linatas could certainly read braids, so Pen merely said, “I’m Learned Penric. The curia sent me in answer to your request for a sensitive.” Pen proffered the note by way of authentication.
Linatas took it back, still staring. “Huh! Are you, hm, Wealdean?”
A deduction from Pen’s excessively blond queue and excessively blue eyes, Pen supposed, and his milk-pale scholar’s skin. “No, I’m from the cantons.”
“Ah, that would account for it. I’ve met merchants from those mountains, if not quite so, hm. Light. You speak Adriac very well!”
“I’ve a talent for languages, hence my employment in the curia.”
The physician shrugged off Pen’s appearance without further comment, thankfully, turning to his more pressing matter. “I suppose it would be fastest to just take you to the poor fellow. I’ve seen my share of men brought in with exposure, injuries, near-drownings, bad drink, or just too much horror, but this . . . ngh. Come this way. Ah, Tebi, thank you, well done. You can go back to Matron now.” The boy nodded and scampered out. Pen followed Linatas up an end staircase to the next floor.
“Has anyone identified the man yet?” Pen asked.
“Not so far. Part of the time he talks like a Lodi man, but the rest is gibberish, crying, and these strange squeakings. He falls out of bed, staggers, writhes on the floor . . . we put him in a private chamber because he disturbed the other men in the ward so. Though since the fever from his parching has eased, it doesn’t seem he’s infected.”
Pen bit his tongue on the impulse to run down the list of symptoms for strokes. He had only one task here, to assure the physician that his patient wasn’t suffering from some unlikely curse, vastly more common in tale than in fact. And then he could escape. The familiar smell of a hospice, clean enough but distinctive, was making him just a little belly-sick.
Steady on, soothed Des.
I’m all right.
Uh-huh . . .
Linatas opened the door to a small chamber with a single cot. A harried-looking orderly was just thrusting a sunburnt young man back into it, who batted clumsily at him and whined.
Des, Sight. Pen stepped within; stopped short. The mystic doubled vision of his demon’s view of the world filled his not-eyes. Mind, perhaps. Oh.
Bastard’s tears, breathed Des. There’s a mess and a half.
Within the sun-scorched fellow thrashed another demon. And not a new-hatched elemental, chaotic and weak, nor even one imprinted by some short-lived animal host. (And all animal hosts were short-lived, once an untutored demon of chaos infested them.) This was a demon of middling density, that had been human once, but then . . .
Des could read off its layers like the rings of a tree. Elemental. Bird. Bird again. Human—a boy. Murdered, cruelly, young demon riven from him. Human, of no good character, but he didn’t get away with his unholy theft for long. Roknari—they put him into the sea. For once, I can’t object. Dolphin, quickly sickened. Demon dismasted of its acquired humanity, splintered, left a stub. Another dolphin, grieving—I did not know they could. Sickened again, more slowly. Then it found this fellow. So confused. The dying comforting the drowning . . . He thought he had gone mad when the demon jumped to him, and no wonder. Nightmare hours more in the water, then hands drawing him out, yes-no-yes-no . . . Pen wasn’t sure which of them was shuddering. Well. Both, of course.
The young man stopped fighting, turned his head. Stared straight at Pen—and Des. He stiffened. Opened his mouth. And screamed and screamed. Because Sight cut both ways, when two sorcerers were thrown together.
Pen hastily backed out of the chamber and slammed the door. His shoulders found the opposite wall, and he fought for breath.
Even other Temple demons, tamed and trained, found Des’s density frightening. Who knew what this wild thing made of her? Though as the screams trailed off Pen supposed he could imagine it. He was cursed with a much-too-vivid imagination, some days.
Most days, panted Des. But now, I admit, it’s justified.
Linatas exited after him, eyes round with alarm. “Learned Penric! What is going on? You’ve turned absolutely green.” He pursed his lips. “Which I’d always thought was a figure of speech—shock is more gray, usually. Must be an effect of your coloration.”
Pen inhaled deeply. A couple of times. “You were right, Master Linatas. That’s not any normal madness.” Wait, was that a contradiction in terms? “Er, common madness. Your patient has contracted a demon. From a dolphin, or rather two dolphins. Who had it from a drowning Roknari, who stole it from a servant boy, who had it from, it seems, a couple of ordinary birds who’d scarcely altered the original formless elemental.”
“You could tell all that from a glance?”
“No, from experience. Quite a lot of experience. You know how that works. Don’t you.” Pen managed an ironic eyebrow-lift. “Or you wouldn’t have called me here, eh?” He straightened. “I don’t know about your patient, but that demon is definitely insane.”
Linatas was briefly speechless, taking this in. Had he really not expected validation of his half-formed suspicions? He found his footing in practicality. “What . . . should we do for him?”
“Certainly continue to keep him in isolation. That demon will be shedding disorder indiscriminately. Potentially dangerous to people and things around him. And to him.” Penric winced an apology in prospect to Des. “It will have to be extracted from him by a dedicated saint of the white god.”
This time, thought Des grimly, no argument.
Penric knew there was such a saint in Lodi, but not offhand at which of the scattered chapterhouses of his Order, or other domicile, said holy person might presently be found. It would seem easier to bring the saint here than the madman to the saint, but who knew. “I’ll have to ask the archdivine, and make arrangements.”
With a few moments to compose himself, Pen’s mind was beginning to move again. Unfortunately into proliferating questions, like a dog scattering a flock of pigeons. “Did you speak to the men who brought him in? How long ago was that?”
“Briefly, and two nights ago. Ah, perhaps we should return to my cabinet and sit down for this.” Linatas was still looking at his visitor with medical concern, though Pen was sure his color was coming back.
By the time they’d gone back downstairs, Linatas had parked Pen on a stool, pressed a beaker of tepid tea upon him, and watched to make sure he drank, the pigeons began to settle. Bird the first . . .
“Just where was he found, did they say?”
Linatas sat in his chair with an unhappy grunt. “About five leagues out to sea. Too far, really, to be a swimmer carried off by the currents. We guessed he must have been swept or fallen from the deck of a ship, although no returning vessel has so far reported a missing man.”
“Was he a sailor, do you think?”
“No. He’s very fit, or he wouldn’t have survived his ordeal, but he doesn’t have the hands of a laborer.” Linatas held his up and clenched and unclenched them by way of illustration. “Deckmen’s and fishermen’s hands are very recognizable.”
Working here for long, Linatas would surely have seen many such, right. “An officer? Seems too young.”
“Lodi shipmasters apprentice young in their trade, but I think more likely he was a passenger.”
Penric glanced down at his own writing callus and ink stains on his fingers. “Any sign of being a clerk or a scholar . . . ?”
“Hm, not strongly marked, no. Perhaps a reluctant writer. When we can make out his speech, it’s neither rude nor high.” Linatas glanced at Pen with return curiosity. “Why did he scream so when he saw you?”
“Ah, not me. He saw my demon. Desdemona. Here, I’ll lend her my mouth, and she can introduce herself. Des? Please be demure, now.”
Des grinned; Pen could feel the set of his face change as she took charge. “Demure? Who do you think you’re talking to? But I shall be properly polite, as befits a tame Temple servant. How do you do, Master Linatas? Thank you for looking after Pen, who tends not to do it for himself. Ah, perhaps that’s demonstration enough, Des,” Pen ended this before she decided it would be droll to embarrass him.
Spoilsport. But she settled back, gratified with her brief outing. And acknowledgement.
Linatas’s thick eyebrows had climbed. “That . . . was not a jape. Was it?”
“No, though many people think it is.” Pen sighed. “You may speak to her directly any time you wish. She hears everything I hear.”
“. . . She? I mean, demons have no bodies.”
“Very long story. About two centuries, so best not delay for it here. But getting back to your patient. Uh, how much do you know about Temple sorcerers? Or any sorcerers?”
“None have come my way as patients. I’ve seen them about town on rare occasions, or at ceremonies for their god.”
Though if they were not in their whites and braids, Linatas could have passed such men and women unknowing in the market any number of times. For such a rare calling, the Lodi Temple was relatively well-supplied with sorcerers; Pen knew the Mother’s Order here had more than one sorcerer-physician in its service, if not at this poorer hospice. Pen’s duty directly to the archdivine was outside the usual chapterhouse hierarchy.
“At a minimum, I need to explain how ascendance works, then,” said Pen. “As a creature of pure spirit, a demon requires a body of matter to support it in the world of matter. The question then becomes who shall be in charge of that body. A person can either possess or be possessed by their demon—rider or ridden is the usual metaphor—and demons in their untutored state naturally desire control. But as creatures of chaos, most aren’t exactly fitted for it. If a wild demon ascends, it’s more like being taken over by a destructive, overexcited drunk.” With supernatural powers.
You were doing all right till that last bit, Des said dryly.
“The other thing you need to know,” Pen went on, ignoring the interpolation, “is that elementals, the bits of the Bastard’s chaos leaked into the world, all begin as identical blank slates. Their ensuing personalities are acquired from and through their succession of hosts. Imprinting is a, hm, not-wrong way to envision it, like ink pressed down from a carved plate. Adding subsequent learning and life experience like any other person, but anyway. So every demon is different from every other demon just as every person is different from every other person, d’you see?” Pen looked up hopefully. This was a key point in his basic-demon-lecture where he often lost his listener to their prior more garbled beliefs. He’d also learned not to try to fit in all the fine points and exceptions at this stage, though the simplifications pained him.
Linatas gave him a go-on wave of his hand; if not exactly convinced, seeming willing to wait for it.
“Which brings us back to this demon.” Unnamed, much as its possessor, or possessee. “It’s very damaged. First, it came into being somewhere in the Roknari archipelago, which is, um, due to the Quadrene heresy not a healthy place for sorcerers or servants of the fifth god generally. The first animals it occupied were a couple of chance-encountered birds, nothing unusual there. But a demon, when its host dies, always tries to move up to a stronger—actually, more complex—host. The now-bird-imprinted spirit next went to a servant boy of maybe ten who, because Quadrene, would have known nothing about what was happening to him nor had any access to help or counsel. But someone else around him, a grown man, I think another servant, figured it out, and coveted what he imagined would be magical powers. Which, in his oppressed state, must have seemed worth the risk. He lured the boy out and secretly murdered him to steal those powers.”
Linatas’s head went back in surprise. “That’s done?”
“It’s tried. By the same sort of person who would commit murder and theft anywhere, I suppose. It . . . generally does not go as the assailant imagines it will.” Pen cleared his throat. “His career as a would-be hedge sorcerer was evidently short, but long enough to attract the attention of the Roknari Temple authorities, who have rather different methods than us Quintarians to deal with problem demons. But effective enough in their way. He was put out to sea to drown. This prevents the demon from jumping to any other human. If no other large-enough creature is around in range to possess, the demon, um, well, dies is as good a term as any.” Evaporates was another, but, fine points.
“Except this time, there was another creature, a curious dolphin. But when a demon is forced back to a lesser host, the effect on the demon’s growing personhood is highly destructive. I’ve only seen one case where the demoted demon could be saved, afterward, and in that one the demon was unusually stable.”
“Save a demon?” The Whyever? hung implied.
Des seemed a bit offended by the bafflement in Linatas’s voice. Pen touched his shoulder braid, and put in on her behalf, “They give us great gifts, if they can be educated, and treated with understanding and respect. Like any other complicated thing of power and danger, which can kill you if misused. A water mill, a sailing ship, a hunting dog, a forge, a foundry—a human being. A pity and a waste when they are ruined.”
Linatas, Pen had no doubt, had seen his share of pitiful waste in his line of work. By the twist of his lips, he was following the argument well enough for now.
“This demon seems to have been ruined twice over, once to be sure by its fall from human to animal, but more from its imprinting by the murdering servant. The apparent madness you are seeing in your patient is from moments of ascendance by aspects of this shattered demon. I suspect some of his gibberish is Roknari. I can’t guess at the language of dolphins.”
“That is the strangest part of all this, to me,” said Linatas. “How he was saved by the dying dolphin, if that’s what happened.”
“Mm, maybe not so odd. Demons are the property, if you like, of the very god of chance and mischance. He looks after them, in His own way. The mark of His white hand seems all over this.” And not for the first time, in Pen’s experience.
“You’re claiming a miracle?” Linatas’s voice rose in pitch, as well as volume.
“In a sense. They say the gods are parsimonious, but I think a better term might be opportunistic. Your drowning patient doubtless prayed to any god listening for succor—I certainly would have, in his position—but the Bastard might merely have seen a good chance to recover His demon for proper disposal.”
Now Pen was getting That Look, which he won so often when trying to explain his god’s peculiar theology. He wasn’t spinning fables, blast it. Or at least his was informed speculation.
“What I’m beginning to wonder more is how your fellow was parted from his ship in the first place. Since I don’t imagine the god pushed him overboard. Not to mention who he is. Though once he is, ah, de-demoned by the saint, he should come back to his senses fairly quickly, and be able to tell us for himself what happened to him. So that’s a set of problems that will solve themselves. The sooner, the better, I suppose.”
Pen climbed to his feet. “I’ll be back, or send a message. The demon will be struggling to stay on top, but it’s possible your fellow may gain ascendance himself from time to time. You may be able to get more out of him then—he’ll be speaking Adriac if he does. Probably.” He wondered at the advisability of his next caution. It might cast an unfortunate doubt upon his own authority. Nevertheless. “Although demons can lie.”
So can humans, muttered Des. And rather more often.
Linatas placed a hand on his desk preparatory to rising. “I’ll call for Tebi to escort you back to the curia, Learned.”
“No need. I know the way now.”
“When will you return?” A tinge of anxiety colored Linatas’s voice.
“Not sure. But I promise I won’t delay. This has become the day’s most urgent task.”
Quick footsteps sounded from the hallway. A man in a green tabard whom Pen recognized as the orderly from upstairs stuck his head through the doorway, his gaze raking the room. “Not here,” he muttered.
“Gnade?” said Linatas. “What’s going on?”
“Sorry, sir. The madman got out when I went to empty the chamber pot. Only a moment—I’m sure he must still be in the building.”
“Get Tebi to help you look.”
“Right, sir.” The orderly galloped off.
But Linatas did not relax back into his chair.
