He appeared to think, although not very long, then sat up. “All right.” Penric signed himself and placed his hand on Kyrato’s brow, following to do so again as the man recoiled. “In the white god’s name I bless you and name you Kuna. A somewhat catch-as-catch-can name-giving ceremony,” he added aside to Nikys, “but you and Des are two adults and can bear witness, so it’s sufficiently sanctified.”
As Kyrato was no longer struggling to escape, or much of anything apart from lying there limply in a state of receding heat stroke and advancing Penric, Nikys retreated uphill while Penric continued sermonizing. Adelis had finished organizing their belongings.
“Does he ever shut up?” Adelis inquired in mild gloom.
“I think he talks more when he’s tired. Makes less sense then, though.” She collected the few undamaged arrows that had fallen in their vicinity, adding them to the quiver.
Penric finished his lecture at last, signed the distraught man, tapped his own lips twice with his thumb, and climbed—well, crawled—back up to them, where he lay on his back and tried to catch his breath. Adelis studied the too-rapid rise and fall of his chest, and shook his head ruefully. “Aye. I see the problem.”
“Shall we each take an arm?” asked Nikys.
“Better, I think, if you take the food, water, bows, and… yes, my sword.”
“And his case?”
“If you choose. I’ll lug the blond fool for you. Consider it your belated Bastard’s Day present, sister.”
“Ah, yes, you missed the last one, didn’t you?”
“Busy with a war at the time, which I’m sure your god would understand. I almost dedicated it to Him.”
Penric argued, but he was outvoted three to one, and at last he was coaxed up onto Adelis’s back. Adelis’s legs bent a little, then straightened. “Heavier than he looks,” he grunted.
“I’m sure I could make it on my own—” Penric began, to which Nikys and Adelis replied in unison, “Shut up, Penric.” Nikys thought Desdemona would have chimed in to the chorus if she could.
In the defile, the shadows were growing purple. This stretch, rough underfoot, was a hard slog by any standard. Nikys and Adelis saved their breaths, although Penric was still talking, going on about something in Wealdean until Adelis threatened to drop him back down the hill. His head drooped to Adelis’s shoulder, and then there were only the deepening twilight sounds of the hills: small insects, a nightingale calling, the crunch of the dirt and gravel below their feet, and then the faintest flutter of a bat. As they came up out of the winding rift, an owl swooped by not ten feet overhead, wings spread in vast silence, and Nikys could see the white glint of Penric’s teeth as he looked up and smiled.
A question occurred to her. Happily, she had just the person to answer it right here. “Desdemona,” she said, “if Penric had been killed”—horrid thought—“and you had been forced to jump, where would you have gone? If the demon always chooses the strongest person in the vicinity, it would have had to be Adelis, right?”
Adelis jerked, then paused to heave his slipping passenger back up and labor on. It was too dark to see his expression, but Nikys imagined it a study in dismay.
“No, child,” said Desdemona. “It would have been you.”
At this, Adelis stopped short. Nikys stopped with him. “Me! Why me?”
“We have been with Penric for eleven years, and are now well imprinted with him. We could have made no other choice.”
Penric breathed out, and Nikys could see the faint sapphire gleam of his widening eyes, but for once he was struck silent. After a moment, they hiked on.
No sounds of pursuit arose behind them.
A prayer of supplication to the Bastard was begging for trouble, in many people’s views, but Nikys thought a prayer of gratitude for His better gifts was not likely to go wrong. She hummed the old hymn of praise under her breath as they reached a flatter trail. “Sing it aloud,” entreated Penric from his perch. “I’ve never heard it in Cedonian.”
She looked up to find no up left; before them, now, the land fell away in velvety darkness. A hundred miles distant it rose again, like a black blanket rucked up upon the horizon, the promise of Orbas.
“Far enough,” huffed Adelis, and let down his burden. They all found seats upon the stony ground, under the sweep of the stars. She shared the water pouch around.
Then Nikys straightened and took up the old words, as Penric had requested. Adelis came in on the chorus in a bass harmony, as he had not done since they’d sung in the temple as youths, before… everything. Penric murmured in a pleased way, and then, at Nikys’s demand, offered up a hymn of his own in his native Wealdean, in a breathy but surprisingly true baritone.
His words fell strange and sweet upon her ears, and so, trading mysteries, they sang up the moonrise.
~FIN~
Author’s Note:
A Bujold Reading-Order Guide
The Fantasy Novels
My fantasy novels are not hard to order. Easiest of all is The Spirit Ring, which is a stand-alone, or aquel, as some wag once dubbed books that for some obscure reason failed to spawn a subsequent series. Next easiest are the four volumes of The Sharing Knife—in order, Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon—which I broke down and actually numbered, as this was one continuous tale divided into non-wrist-breaking chunks.
What were called the Chalion books after the setting of its first two volumes, but which now that the geographic scope has widened I’m dubbing the World of the Five Gods, were written to be stand-alones as part of a larger whole, and can in theory be read in any order. Some readers think the world-building is easier to assimilate when the books are read in publication order, and the second volume certainly contains spoilers for the first (but not the third.) In any case, the publication order is:
The Curse of Chalion
Paladin of Souls
The Hallowed Hunt
“Penric’s Demon”
“Penric and the Shaman”
“Penric’s Mission”
In terms of internal world chronology, The Hallowed Hunt would fall first, the Penric novellas perhaps a hundred and fifty years later, and The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls would follow a century or so after that.
Other Original E-books
The short story collection Proto Zoa contains five very early tales—three (1980s) contemporary fantasy, two science fiction—all previously published but not in this handy format. The novelette “Dreamweaver’s Dilemma” may be of interest to Vorkosigan completists, as it is the first story in which that proto-universe began, mentioning Beta Colony but before Barrayar was even thought of.
Sidelines: Talks and Essays is just what it says on the tin—a collection of three decades of my nonfiction writings, including convention speeches, essays, travelogues, introductions, and some less formal pieces. I hope it will prove an interesting companion piece to my fiction.
The Vorkosigan Stories
Many pixels have been expended debating the ‘best’ order in which to read what have come to be known as the Vorkosigan Books (or Saga), the Vorkosiverse, the Miles books, and other names. The debate mainly revolves around publication order versus internal-chronological order. I favor internal chronological, with a few adjustments.
It was always my intention to write each book as a stand-alone, so that the reader could theoretically jump in anywhere. While still somewhat true, as the series developed it acquired a number of sub-arcs, closely related tales that were richer for each other. I will list the sub-arcs, and then the books, and then the duplication warnings. (My publishing history has been complex.) And then the publication order, for those who want it.
Shards of Honor and Barrayar. The first two books in the series proper, they detail the adventures of Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony and Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar. Shards was my very first novel ever; Barrayar was actually my eighth, but continues the tale the next day after the end of Shards. For readers who want to be sure of beginn
ing at the beginning, or who are very spoiler-sensitive, start with these two.
The Warrior’s Apprentice and The Vor Game (with, perhaps, the novella “The Mountains of Mourning” tucked in between.) The Warrior’s Apprentice introduces the character who became the series’ linchpin, Miles Vorkosigan; the first book tells how he created a space mercenary fleet by accident; the second how he fixed his mistakes from the first round. Space opera and military-esque adventure (and a number of other things one can best discover for oneself), The Warrior’s Apprentice makes another good place to jump into the series for readers who prefer a young male protagonist.
After that: Brothers in Arms should be read before Mirror Dance, and both, ideally, before Memory.
Komarr makes another alternate entry point for the series, picking up Miles’s second career at its start. It should be read before A Civil Campaign.
Borders of Infinity, a collection of three of the five currently extant novellas, makes a good Miles Vorkosigan early-adventure sampler platter, I always thought, for readers who don’t want to commit themselves to length. (But it may make more sense if read after The Warrior’s Apprentice.) Take care not to confuse the collection-as-a-whole with its title story, “The Borders of Infinity”.
Falling Free takes place 200 years earlier in the timeline and does not share settings or characters with the main body of the series. Most readers recommend picking up this story later. It should likely be read before Diplomatic Immunity, however, which revisits the “quaddies”, a bioengineered race of free-fall dwellers, in Miles’s time.
The novels in the internal-chronological list below appear in italics; the novellas (officially defined as a story between 17,500 words and 40,000 words) in quote marks.
Falling Free
Shards of Honor
Barrayar
The Warrior’s Apprentice
“The Mountains of Mourning”
“Weatherman”
The Vor Game
Cetaganda
Ethan of Athos
Borders of Infinity
“Labyrinth”
“The Borders of Infinity”
Brothers in Arms
Mirror Dance
Memory
Komarr
A Civil Campaign
“Winterfair Gifts”
Diplomatic Immunity
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
CryoBurn
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen
Caveats:
The novella “Weatherman” is an out-take from the beginning of the novel The Vor Game. If you already have The Vor Game, you likely don’t need this.
The original ‘novel’ Borders of Infinity was a fix-up collection containing the three novellas “The Mountains of Mourning”, “Labyrinth”, and “The Borders of Infinity”, together with a frame to tie the pieces together. Again, beware duplication. The frame story does not stand alone.
Publication order:
This is also the order in which the works were written, apart from a couple of the novellas, but is not identical to the internal-chronological. It goes:
Shards of Honor (June 1986)
The Warrior’s Apprentice (August 1986)
Ethan of Athos (December 1986)
Falling Free (April 1988)
Brothers in Arms (January 1989)
Borders of Infinity (October 1989)
The Vor Game (September 1990)
Barrayar (October 1991)
Mirror Dance (March 1994)
Cetaganda (January 1996)
Memory (October 1996)
Komarr (June 1998)
A Civil Campaign (September 1999).
Diplomatic Immunity (May 2002)
“Winterfair Gifts” (February 2004)
CryoBurn (November 2010)
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance (November 2012)
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (February 2016)
. . . Thirty years fitted on a page. Huh.
Happy reading!
— Lois McMaster Bujold
Lois McMaster Bujold
Photo by Carol Collins
www.goodreads.com
www.spectrumliteraryagency.com/bujold.htm
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Lois McMaster Bujold was born in 1949, the daughter of an engineering professor at Ohio State University, from whom she picked up her early interest in science fiction. She now lives in Minneapolis, and has two grown children. She began writing with the aim of professional publication in 1982. She wrote three novels in three years; in October of 1985, all three sold to Baen Books, launching her career. Bujold went on to write many other books for Baen, mostly featuring her popular character Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, his family, friends, and enemies. Her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Her fantasy from Eos includes the award-winning Chalion series and the Sharing Knife series.
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 Curse of Chalion
Paladin of Souls
The Hallowed Hunt
“Penric’s Demon”
“Petric and the Shaman”
“Penric’s Mission”
The Sharing Knife Tetralogy
Volume One: Beguilement
Volume Two: Legacy
Volume Three: Passage
Volume Four: Horizon
Other Fantasy
The Spirit Ring
Short Stories
Proto Zoa
Nonfiction
Sidelines: Talks and Essays
Table of Contents
Title Page
Penric’s Mission
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
Author’s Note
About the Author
Books by Lois McMaster Bujold
Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric’s Mission
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