Penric and the Shaman (Penric & Desdemona Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

allow, twenty. At a stretch. “Were you some sort of precocious scholar, as a youth?”
    “Not at all. I liked to read, but there weren’t many books to be had in Greenwell.”
    “Yet you dashed through the learning for a divine in just four years?” It normally took six.
    “Three. I came back here to the Princess-Archdivine’s service last spring. You have to realize, I—we—had already been through the training for a divine four times already. In a sense. And twice for a physician. So it was more of a refreshing . I tried to talk the seminary’s masters into granting me my rank fivefold on that basis, but they resisted my blandishments, more’s the pity.”
    “I suppose… it was as if you already carried a tutor inside of you?” Which seemed like cheating, somehow.
    Penric grimaced. “Mostly. Although Desdemona thought it was just hilarious never to help me out during my oral examinations. It would have been bad for you, Penric.” His brows twitched up, and his mouth, down. “Ha-ha.”
    Was that last an interjection from the demon? The voice sounded faintly altered in cadence and accent from the strangely sunny young man’s usual tones.
    “That was Ruchia,” Penric put in, confirming Oswyl’s guess. “Desdemona speaks with her voice a lot. I don’t know if it’s because she is the latest and freshest, er, imprint, or held the demon longest, or simply had the strongest temperament. Time may have something to do with it. The first three women are almost impossible to tell apart, and I don’t think it’s just because they shared the Cedonian language. They may be melting together with age.” He stared out over the lake, pewter gray and rippling bleakly in the chill wind blowing down from the distant mountain peaks shrouded with clouds. “Altogether, I calculated my demon is just over two hundred years old. I have noted,” he added, “that the demon-generations are getting longer, as this tale goes on. I find that heartening, myself. I sometimes wonder what my… imprint will seem like, to the next person to inherit Desdemona.”
    “Your head seems very, uh, crowded,” Oswyl offered at last, into the rather blighted silence that followed this.
    “Very,” said Penric. He brightened. “But at least I never lack for tales.”
    “I… wait. Now which was Desdemona, again?” The question he’d started this interrogation with, Oswyl dimly recalled. He kept his fingers curled firmly on his reins.
    “That’s my name for all of her together. Like a town council of ten older sisters who issue one edict. It also saves my running down several names every time I wish to address her, like my father shouting at his children.”
    “I… see.” Oswyl’s brows drew down. “The sorcerer I rode with from Easthome never told me anything like this.” The dour fellow had not talked much at all, in fact.
    “Perhaps his demon was younger and less developed. Perhaps he does not have a very cordial relation with it, if its prior riders were not happy men.” Penric’s lips twitched up, and his voice shifted a betraying hair. “Perhaps you never asked—Inquirer.”
    Oswyl hunched his shoulders and pressed his horse into a trot. They could not reach the next town soon enough. And I am betting not only my mission, but maybe my life, upon this mad-brained sorcerer? Father of Winter, in this Your season, help me!

IV

    Inglis woke in dimness, but not darkness. A bright square proved to be a small window on the wall of a hut, covered with parchment. On the opposite side, a rough stone fireplace gave off a red gleam and a few yellow flickers, like animal eyes peering out of a little cave. The walls were a mix of stone and logs, chinked with moss and mud. He lay tucked up in a nest of faintly reeky furs, on a floor of dirt scattered with crushed bracken. The big dog lay curled at his feet, sleeping, its paws loose and relaxed.
    His boots and outer garments were gone, his chest bare. Convulsively, he felt at his