Dear readers, tonight with us is a learned temple divine and sorcerer — and the chaos demon he possesses. They are here to tell us about their complex relationship, as Penric navigates a world — and an occupation — he wasn’t prepared for, and Desdemona tries to keep him alive.

Tell us a little about where you grew up. What was it like there?

Penric: I was born seventh child of my family at Jurald Court, in the valley of the Greenwell in the Cantons.  My father was the baron there.  Someone once offended me by calling my home a fortified farmhouse, but, really… he wasn’t wrong.  Looking back, it was a rather idyllic childhood, running all over the mountains, learning to ride and hunt with a bow or traplines, haying in the summer—everyone turned out for that, from the lord on down.  Butchering livestock in the fall, which proved oddly useful later when I came to teach human anatomy to the Mother goddess’s medical students in Martensbridge. And, ah, to certain tasks in support of Des.  Not many books at Jurald Court, though.

Des, as a chaos demon of the Bastard god, how would you even answer that question?  I mean… can you remember being born as an elemental?  Is it even being born?

Desdemona: [the sense of a snort—if you can call it that in a bodiless demon]:  Of course I don’t remember emerging from the Bastard’s hell.  It’s a place of chaos.  Neither memory nor any other kind of form can exist there in the roiling white boil.  I suppose my earliest memory is of being in—or being, hardly a difference at that stage—the wild mare in the peninsular mountains of Cedonia.  Her death, now, that I remember, and jumping to the lioness that killed and ate her.  Then the first human, brave Sugane the village woman, who speared the lioness and gave me my first human language to think in.  And a fear of heights.  Then nine more women after her.  All their childhoods are but borrowed memories.  Their deaths, though… in two centuries, I had twelve deaths, and no births.  Think on that, my sweet holy necromancer.

Pen: Oh, I do.  Or you do.  It’s getting harder to tell our thoughts apart, anymore.

Des: Welcome to my world.

What did you first think when you two met?

Pen:  I was bewildered.  Nineteen years old, riding to what I thought was going to be my betrothal.  I mean, I didn’t realize this dying old woman on the roadside I’d stopped to try to help was a Temple sorceress.  I’d never even met a sorcerer before.

Des:  We thought you were the best human in range to jump to—though there wasn’t much choice in the moment.  The least rigid mind, which mattered… well, you know how much it matters now.  Incandescent wits, trapped under the stone of your benighted rural life.  Also [the sense of a slight, embarrassed cough] by far the prettiest.

Pen: [Ignores this.  Though somewhat flattered by the “incandescent wits” bit.]

What do you do now?

Pen: As a youth, I certainly never expected to become a learned Temple divine, seminary trained.  Five times over, counting my own training after I contracted Des, and that of four Temple sorceresses who had her before me.  And three times trained for a physician, mine and two learned women likewise, though that… did not go well.

Des: [snorts, but charitably makes no comment.  Some wounds do not bear touching.]

Pen: The five new languages Des gifted me with from her prior humans have allowed me much comfortable work as a translator.  Beyond that, whatever tasks my Temple superiors or my secular authorities request.  Or my god, Fifth and White.  As a sworn servant to the god of mischance, I never know what distressed persons or problems may next be given into my hands.  “No Hands But Ours”, as the motto of my Order says.   

Des:  Me, I try to keep this fool alive.  He—and the Temple and the secular lords and most of all the god—don’t make it easy.

What was the scariest thing in your adventures?

Pen: I suppose, being trapped in that bottle dungeon in Patos, having to trepan myself for my brain bleed, thinking I had failed my mission for the duke of Adria, and the waters rising to drown us.  That was a bad week.

Des: Being brought into the presence of a god.  Every time.  I swear, Pen, you must do something to attract Them.

Pen:  Oh.  Yes.  A god is the only thing that can directly kill an immortal demon.

Des:  I wouldn’t call us immortal.  More like… durable.

Pen: For daunting, I grant you the five gods top even the brain bleed.  Though I don’t think of it as fear, exactly.  Awe, certainly… gah, that is too weak a word for such immensity.

Whom (or what) do you really hate?

Pen:  I… don’t suppose I hate any person, really.  All souls are equal in the sight of the gods.  Or—no, not that—equally judged.  Which is Their holy task, not mine, thankfully.  I try to remember that, when I am frustrated by the stupidities of the world.  I hate pointless, cruel acts.  And the waste of the Sundered dying souls, when they refuse or are refused by the gods.

Des: I hate anyone or anything that threatens Pen.  Or those he loves.

Pen:  Oh.  [clears throat] …I don’t care for pirate-slavers.  Or sea travel.  Anymore.

Des:  Hah.

Tell us a little about your friends.

Pen:  Oh, this unexpected life has brought me so many!  Princesses and archdivines, soldiers and wharf rats, a Temple Inquirer, a Wealdean royal shaman, merchants and servants, dukes and lawyers, saints and orphans—sometimes both at once—physicians, sorcerers, that one assassin… well, two, counting the extraordinary eunuch secretary Bosha I suspect—er, three, come to think—the list goes on.  I have so much correspondence these days.

Des:  Any friend of Pen’s is a friend of mine.  Mostly.  I mean, how else would I encounter one, living inside his head as I do?  Bosha, I grant, was special.  I suspect he is beloved of the white god.  That is not a blessing.

Pen:  And Nikys.  But she’s in a class by herself.

Des:  Indeed.

What’s your favourite drink, colour, and relaxing pastime?

Pen:  Uh… white is the emblematic color of my god the Bastard, so I suppose I should say that, but really… blue.  Which is emblematic of the Daughter of Spring, patron goddess of girls, Who has lately become important to me for personal reasons, though I am not sworn to Her.  But I liked blue before that.  The vast luminous blue of a clear summer sky is the best.  For drink, wines and teas—well, not the bad wines—I don’t care for ales.  When I’m thirsty enough, cold pure water beats them all.  Did I mention Des has a trick for pulling it out of the air?  A sorcerer need never die of thirst.  For pastime, reading.  And exploring new archives, when I can find them.

Des:  Demons do not see as humans do, except through their sorcerers’ eyes.  Nor taste, nor any other sensation, except through that same body.  What Pen enjoys, I do perforce.  Unless he’s being boring that day.  For pastime [looks shifty] destruction is the best.  I am a demon of disorder, after all.  That is food and drink and air to me.  Pen rations mine which… may be for the best.

Can you share a secret with us, which you’ve never told anyone else?

Pen:  I can withhold no secrets from Des.  She lives in my mind.  I’m not sure that the reverse is true, though.

Des: …

What does the future hold for you?

Pen:  I never know.  I used to think I did, when I was younger and more ignorant, but I’ve always been proved wrong.  A friend of mine, the Bastard’s saint Blessed Iroki, once remarked that he’d given up praying for things because he found he’d always prayed too small, in contrast to the abundance of leaving it up to our god.  All right, given that our god is the god of mischance, perhaps that’s ambiguous.  Though always abundant, to be sure.

Des:  I will be with Pen until… I can’t be.

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 Minnesota, 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, launching her popular Vorkosigan Saga science fiction series.  Her fantasy work includes The World of the Five Gods and the Sharing Knife series.  More recently she has been exploring self-e-publishing with the novella-length tales of the sorcerer Penric and his demon Desdemona, and other works.

In 2020, Bujold was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America.  A complete list of her awards may be found here: http://www.sfadb.com/Lois_McMaster_Bujold  Her books have been translated into over twenty languages.

You can find Penric & Desdemona on the pages of their eponymous series, starting with Penric’s Demon and continuing across to twelve books to the recently released Demon Daughter.

Browse our archives for past interviews, or follow the site by email (bottom-right) to know immediately when your new best-book-friend makes an appearance.