Penric's Demon (10 page)

“What?”

“Now’s your moment. To the cabinet.”

Pen set his volume down and hurried over to it. “Wait. It’s still locked.” He wasn’t going to try to force it; the lock was sturdy, the woodwork was fine, and the destruction would be obvious.

“Put your hand on the lock.”

Baffled, Pen did so. A surge of heat seemed to flow from his palm. Within the metal mechanism, something clicked.

“Could you always do that?” he asked.

“Not for the first few days.” He had the sense of a convalescent tottering happily around a room after too long abed, delighted to be working weakened muscles again.

“But . . . Tigney must know. Hasn’t he told the librarian?”

“To be sure, which is why you have never been left alone here. This oversight will not last. So hasten.”

Willingly, Pen did so. The cabinet door creaked wide.

The contents were slightly disappointing; a mere two shelves of volumes, less than forty in all, the other two shelves bare. Nothing sparkled or growled or seemed to need to be chained like a vicious dog. His hands reached out eagerly. “Which one?”

“Not that, no, no . . . that one.”

“It’s not the thickest.”

“No, but it’s the best. Three-fourths of what’s here is rubbish. Now close up. She’s coming back.”

Pen swung the door shut; the latch clicked. He set his hand to it. “And lock up again?”

“We can’t do that.”

“Wait, why not?”

“Locking increases order. Too advanced for you right now.”

The disorder that would result if the librarian thought to check the lock was a bit frightening to contemplate, if one wasn’t a durable demon. Pen scurried back to his bench, shoved the filched volume into his tunic, and opened his Darthacan chronicle once more. The words seemed to dance before his eyes, and the volume tucked under his heart to burn. Footsteps sounded from the hall.

“Don’t leave right away,” muttered Desdemona, “and
don’t
make a show of it, or offer limping explanations. Go out exactly as you always do.”

To Pen’s relief, the first one back was the scribe, who gave Pen a cordial nod and took up her quill again. The librarian, returning a few minutes later, looked around as if satisfied and went to her desk, where she took up a perpetual copying task that she fitted in between other duties, much like a woman with her knitting. Pen read two more pages without taking in a word, then rose, tucked the parchment slip with his name on it into the page where he’d stopped, and set the volume on the librarian’s desk with his usual “Thank you.”

She nodded back, with a mildly approving look, and Pen made his escape.

Unsure where else to hide, Pen went back to Clee’s room; to his relief, the dedicat was out. He closed the door, set a chair in front of it to slow anyone entering, jounced down on his bed, and opened the stolen book.
Borrowed
book. It wasn’t as though he meant to take it out of the house. And he certainly meant to put it back. Undetected, by preference.

Essentials of Sorcery and the Management of Demons
, the title page read.
The Work of Learned Ruchia of Martensbridge, Senior Divine and Sorceress of the Bastard’s Order. With Aid from Learned Helvia of Liest and Learned Amberein of Saone. Volume One.

“Hey,” said Pen, indignant. “You wrote this!”

“Not we,” sighed Desdemona. “Ruchia’s doings. We would not have had the patience. And a tedious great deal of work it was, too. We threatened to throw her off a bridge, once, if she would not finish it up and be done.”

Distracted by this, Pen found his next sentence jammed up in his mouth. When he had untangled his tongue, he asked instead, “Could you have?”

“No,” sighed Desdemona. “Not her. Neither from a bridge nor from our being.” She added after a little, “Best rider ever.”

“Couldn’t you just tell me all this?”

“Your voice would grow hoarse, and Tigney would wonder.” Another pause. “The Temple offers many warnings about demons, and they are not all
wrong
. You may trust Ruchia. Also, you will not be able to waste precious time
arguing
with her.”

Taking the hint, Pen turned to the first page. This text was handwritten, not printed from woodblock, which made it easier to read, but also made him worry about how few copies might exist. He tried to settle himself and pay attention, and not read so fast in his excitement that he failed to take it all in.

After a time, he asked, “Desdemona, what does she mean by
enhanced perception
?

“Hm. Can you juggle?”

“I can manage three balls. I have trouble with four or more.” And there had been strong domestic objections to his attempt to try it with burning brands, like the acrobat he’d seen in the marketplace.

“Find three things. Or four.”

The room was not well supplied with balls, apples, or other substitutes, but he finally rolled up two pairs of socks. “So, and?”

“So, juggle.”

The three sock balls went as usual; the four, after a brief encouraging run, ended with Pen fishing dust-smeared sock balls out from under the beds.

“Now, again,” said Desdemona.

The sock balls rose—and slowed. They curved in the same trajectories, but Pen felt he might almost take a sip of ale between having to attend to each. His hands moved more languidly, though, and with more effort, as if he were stroking through water.

“That was fun,” he said, collecting all four out of the air and stopping.

“We can’t keep that up for very long,” said Desdemona, “but it is useful in a pinch.”

“Should I wish to take up the trade of a marketplace juggler, I suppose.”

“It works as well for dodging blows. Whether from fists or blades.”

“Oh.” Pen thought this through. “Could I dodge arrows?”

“If there are not too many.”

“Could I snatch arrows out of the air . . . ?”

“Only if you were wearing thick gloves.”

“Could I—”

“Pen?”

“Yes?”

“Keep reading.”

“Ah. Yes.”

After a time he asked, “Could I shoot fireballs from my fingertips?”

Desdemona vented a long-suffering sigh. “No. You may light very, very small fires.”

Pen pulled over the candle stump and held his forefinger to the black wick. “Show me.” A moment later, he snatched his hand back. “Ow!” He sucked on the scorched finger. The flame licked up, smoked, and steadied.

“I see it will take you a little practice,” she said serenely. He thought she was laughing at him, but it was hard to tell. He was reminded that
she
didn’t have to feel the pain.

“I confess I don’t see much advantage over flint and steel or a spill. Unless you didn’t have them, I suppose.”

“You may also do the same from across the room. Or across the street.” She added after a moment, “Fire is beloved of the god. You only need a very, very small flame, shrewdly placed, and the fire will do the rest. With equal ease, you can light a candle—or burn down a city.”

Having no desire to burn down a city, Pen dismissed that last. “I wish I’d had this skill when struggling with all those rainy campfires, when we were up in the hills trying to make meat out of sheep. I would have been the most popular man on the hunt.”

Desdemona was silent for a moment, then said, “It is one of many skills best kept discreetly hidden. For if it is known, any accidental fire within a mile could be blamed on you. And no way for you to prove your innocence.”

“Oh.”

“In fact, most of the skills are dual-edged that way.”

Pen digested that. Was that one more reason that real Temple sorcerers were so quiet and elusive?

He turned the next page.

*
   
*
   
*

It was the succeeding afternoon before he could steal another session with the book, feigning to be going up to his room to work on repairs of his new old clothing. After the first few chapters, all seeming very practical, Ruchia’s prose grew denser, and the subtleties of what she was trying to describe more slippery.

“I don’t wholly understand what she’s trying to say about the magical friction,” he complained to Desdemona, who had been silent for so long he’d wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

“Hm. Pull that candle over, and light it and blow it out a few times, as fast as you can.”

He did so, fascinated with the process. He still found it easier to point when making the little flash shoot up where he intended, though not with his hand held so close. He could dimly sense how, with practice, he might not even need that aid. After a dozen rounds of the exercise, he shook out his hand, which had grown uncomfortably hot even though he’d not touched the flame. He rubbed it with the other.

“Feel that, do you?”

“Yes?”

“If a sorcerer demands too much strong magic of his demon, too quickly, his body will go beyond mere fever to its own destruction.”

Pen’s brow furrowed. “Are you saying a sorcerer could
burst into flames
?”

“Mm, no, the body is too wet for that. He would more just . . . burst. Like a grilled sausage splitting its casing.”

Pen stared down at his torso. “Yech. Does this happen
often
?” Surely any demise so spectacular would have been talked about more.

“No, not really. Usually the sorcerer will pass out before that. Perhaps suffer the usual aftereffects of a bad fever. But it is certainly possible in
theory
.”

Pen wished she didn’t sound so enthusiastic about the idea. Revolted but not deterred, he returned to the book.

A long while later, he frowned and thumbed back to the title page. “Where is volume two?
What
is volume two? Should I have it? Is there a copy in that cabinet?”

“There is, but it is beyond you for the moment. It is mostly about the application of sorcery to medicine.”

He wrinkled his nose, staring at the page. “Did Learned Helvia and Learned Amberein help Ruchia with that part?”

“Oh, yes. Ruchia also consulted with another physician or two from the Mother’s Order, on the more obscure points.”

He considered the timing. It didn’t add up. “Wait. Were Helvia and Amberein still
alive
at the writing?”

“Not exactly. Maybe in the sense that their knowledge survived the way Ruchia’s voice has survived on those pages. Ruchia still credited them anyway, by way of a memorial. She spent the most time on the second volume, by way of restitution, she said, for the unplanned loss of us from the Mother’s hand.”

Pen wondered if there was a very disappointed young physician somewhere, missing, due to Pen’s roadside accident, the Temple demon she or he had been promised. “Can I learn all of that?”

“Perhaps. In due course. You would do well to spend some time studying with the Mother’s people first before trying much. But how much of your life do you really wish to devote to treating people’s worms?”

“Leaving aside the views of the worms, healing seems a
safer
sort of magic than some of these other things.”

“Oh, no. It is by far the most dangerous. And the most subtle. Most dangerous because most subtle, we suppose.”

“I suppose . . . if anything went wrong . . . is it possible to
kill
a person by magic?”

“No,” said Desdemona firmly, but then, after a long pause, “Yes. But only once.”

“Why only once?”

“Death opens a door to the gods, through which they can, for a moment, reach into the world directly. The demon would be naked and helpless before our Master, and be plucked out like an eyeball before the sorcerer could take a breath. And be delivered to the Bastard’s hell, and its utter destruction.”

“Even if it were not murder, but, say, a medical accident while trying to treat a person? The intent not harm, but good?”

“That is part of what makes the practice so challenging. And not for the novice.”

Pen curled up atop his blankets and hugged his knees. “Desdemona—what happened to Tigney’s demon? Do you know?”

A sense of deep discomfort. “Yes, for Ruchia supervised it.”

“What, then?”

“The theory is covered four chapters on.”

The last chapter in the book, Pen realized. “Yes, but I want the story. The short tale, at least.”

A long silence. Surly? Uncertain? Untrusting . . . ?

Pen drew breath and said more firmly, “Desdemona, tell me.”

Compelled—so, he
could
compel—she reluctantly replied, “Even at the beginning, he was overmatched with a demon too strong for him. For a few years, all seemed well, and he reveled in his new powers. But then his demon ascended, and made off with his body. He fled to Orbas. It took the Temple a year to find him, subdue him, and bring him back.”

“And?” he prodded, when she did not at once go on.

“And they brought him before the Saint of Idau.”

“The town of Idau possesses a saint? I had not heard of such.”