Raven's Strike rd-2

by Patricia Briggs

  “Hunters trap or cage their prey,” said Jes thoughtfully.

  Lehr set Cornsilk on the trail toward home and concentrated on staying on. He’d not slept much last night, and the magic he’d worked had drained him.

  “The bag,” he said suddenly worried. “Did you get the bag Brewydd wanted us to give mother?”

  “Yes,” Jes said. “It holds mermori. Rongier the Librarian’s and the others that Benroln had. There were five of them. Mother won’t be happy. She already has too many of them.”

  The sun was warm, and Lehr found himself fighting to keep his eyes open. His eyelids burned, and his throat hurt.

  “Go ahead and doze,” said the Guardian at Cornsilk’s shoulder. “Jes and I’ll keep you safe. There’s nothing more you have to do.”

  “I’m sick,” said Lehr in surprise.

  “Yes,” said the Guardian. “Rest.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “You should have gone out fishing with the children,” Tier observed mildly, without looking up from his carving.

  That of the “children”—Hennea, Phoran, his guardsmen, and Rinnie—only Rinnie really still qualified—didn’t make them any less his children, Seraph knew. Everyone Tier cared about, he took under his wing, up to and including Ciro, who was a contemporary of Tier’s grandfather.

  “You’re as anxious as I am,” she told him, turning to pace the other direction. “That’s the only time you ever carve.”

  Tier held up the unrecognizable object he’d spent the better part of the morning shaping with his knife. “Obviously a good decision on my part,” he said.

  Seraph sat down next to him on the porch bench and rested her head against his arm. She sighed. “It has two eyes, but the right one is too big and a little lower than the other.”

  “That’s the mouth,” he said. He set the carving on his lap and ruffled her hair. “They should have been back by now—even if they were bringing the whole clan here.”

  “According to the map,” she reminded him. “None of us have ever been that way. Maps are unreliable.”

  They’d had several variations of this conversation over the past week. This was the second one that morning, and it was her turn to point out the harmless things that might have delayed the boys—at least, she assumed Jes had gone off with Lehr.

  At their feet, Gura lifted his head and turned his head to look at the trail that Lehr had taken away from the house. Seraph felt Tier’s pulse speed up to match hers, but then Gura flopped over on his back to expose his belly to the late-morning sun.

  Tier sighed. “At least Hennea took everyone else, so Phoran’s not pacing the floor, too. For a man with a reputation as a lazy womanizer, he sure doesn’t sit still for long. I thought the two of you were going to start colliding.”

  “When he’s still, he manages to look as though he’ll never move again,” Seraph said.

  Tier laughed. “I’ll grant you—”

  Gura rolled to his feet and gave a soft woof, staring at the trail. Seraph looked with him, but couldn’t see very far down the trail because it curved back and forth up the forested hillside.

  Tier set his carving aside and walked to the end of the porch. He put his hand up to shadow his eyes as if that would improve his chances of seeing around corners. Gura’s tail began to wag.

  “It’s the boys,” said Seraph.

  “Or the others returning from fishing by a roundabout way.” Despite the laconic words, Seraph heard the eagerness in her husband’s voice.

  Gura’s tail wagging doubled in speed, and he let out a series of thunderous barks.

  “Go get them,” said Tier.

  Gura didn’t wait for a second invitation before he took off up the trail as fast as he could run. Tier gave Seraph a wide, relieved grin and waited for the boys to appear around the corner.

  But they didn’t.

  “Too long,” said Tier, echoing Seraph’s thoughts.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  He leapt off the porch with much the same speed as Gura had exhibited, and ran up the trail with the wolfish gait that she’d seen him use to eat up miles in the woods. There was no sign of his limp, and she hoped he’d been truthful about how much better his knees were doing. Knees or no, he’d not stop running until he found them.

  Seraph went into the house and got out the bread she’d baked last night and began to slice and butter it. The boys would be hungry; her boys were always hungry.

  They would be fine. She repeated it to herself like a mantra.

  The front door opened at last, and instead of the cool greeting she’d composed to cover her pleasure, Seraph said, “Lay him on the bed. Did you carry him all the way down the hill?”

  She stripped Lehr’s bedding down so her grim-faced, sweat-drenched husband could lay their son in his bed.

  “No, the horse did that,” Tier said as he helped her strip boots and dirty clothing off Lehr, who didn’t even twitch. “Jes is out tending the mare.”

  When they were through, Tier helped Seraph tug the bedding around Lehr.

  “I’ll go out and finish taking care of the horse,” Tier said. “Jes doesn’t look much better than Lehr—though he’s still on his feet—but he wouldn’t leave that damned mare to wait on me.”

  “Someone taught him to be stubborn,” Seraph said coolly.

  Tier grinned at her tiredly and touched her cheek. “They’re all right, Empress,” he told her. “Worn-out, not hurt. Relax.”

  Seraph waited until Jes finished the stew and bread she’d warmed for him before she folded her arms, and said, “Tell me.”

  Jes smiled faintly in her direction, the expression making him look even more exhausted. It made her feel guilty for pushing him. Guilt always made her angry. Even when she had no cause. She raised her eyebrows.

  “Don’t know where to start,” he said, the smile dying more quickly than it had come. “Rongier’s clan is dead. So is the town of Colbern. Lehr sealed the walls so that no one will go in there until it’s safe again.”

  Seraph sat down, careful to keep her back straight and her face controlled. Control was important.

  “You found the entire city dead?” asked Tier. “Of plague? There aren’t many diseases that will kill that many.”

  Lehr groaned from the bed, then sat up. “Gods take it,” he swore—a common Rederni oath, though Seraph had never heard him use it. “If I let Jes tell it, you’ll never figure out what happened—but when I’m finished I get to go back to sleep.”

  He sat up cross-legged, put his elbows on his knees, and rested his head on his hands as if it ached. “Jes showed up before I was a full day out. We followed the map, and it was a shortcut to Colbern.”

  In concise, tired sentences Lehr described what they had found. Seraph listened without interrupting as he told them about Brewydd and shadow plague.

  “I think she thought she’d made us immune to it,” Lehr mumbled. “But we caught it right enough, both Jes and I. I don’t know why we didn’t die like everyone else.”

  “The Guardian thinks that Brewydd saved us,” added Jes. “I’m not a healer, but I could drive the shadow away—he says that if—if it were buried in illness, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. So we got shadow-sick, but not the actual illness that the Shadowed used to carry the taint.” He took a bag off his belt and handed it to Seraph. “Brewydd told me to give you this.”

  She could feel them though the leather of the bag. Mermori. Each one standing for death and more death. Benroln had had five, he’d said.

  “Both of you go to sleep, now,” said Tier, his eyes on her face. “Your mother and I are going for a walk. Lehr, do you want food? Jes has put enough food away for any four men. You have to be hungry.”

  Lehr shook his head, once, very firmly, rolled back flat, and pulled his bedding over his head.

  Seraph left the bag on the table when she got up to go to the door. It wouldn’t matter. If she threw them in the sea, they would still come back to her. She couldn’t es
cape them. The symbols of her dying people and of her guilt.

  Seraph let her grief-fed anger power her strides as she walked up the steep path that the boys had ridden down. As she walked, she remembered the faces of the people of Rongier’s clan. They were all dead, as her own clan was dead. As Tier would be dead. All her fault.

  Control, she thought.

  It was dangerous to be angry when you were a Raven. Ravens don’t cry. Tears don’t solve anything. Angrily, she wiped her eyes.

  She was aware that Tier followed behind her, letting her set the pace, letting her keep a little distance between them.

  If we hadn’t been in such a hurry to get home, she thought. If we’d gone with Benroln, then there would have been Jes and Lehr to see the shadow and Hennea and me to help fight it. A Traveler shouldn’t have a home—it was just one more distraction from their job of fighting the Stalker and his minions.

  “What’s done is gone, lass,” said Tier. She didn’t know if she’d spoken her thoughts out loud, or if he just knew what she was thinking. “Your clan had Raven and Eagle and assorted other Orders, and no one was able to stop the plague that killed them. If we’d gone with Benroln, like as not, we’d only have died, too. Of all the people in the city, Brewydd managed only to save our sons. If I die from this problem with my Order, that won’t be your fault either. You didn’t put the spells on me—the Path’s wizards did.”

  Seraph stopped. The thought of Tier’s possible danger had put an odd icy calm between her and her anger. It was soothing to feel nothing.

  “You’re right,” she said. “The plagues that killed my clan and so many others—and allowed the Path to sew its minions amongst the Septs like poison weeds—it was all shadow-driven. The Shadowed is… has destroyed my people apurpose. Is trying to destroy you.”

  Pain flared through her as she spoke the last sentence.

  A pain that was buried behind ice, she reminded herself swiftly. She didn’t feel anything now. She was Raven. She was in control.

  “That’s how I see it,” Tier said, his voice wary.

  The tone surprised her: she was calm now, why was he worried? She turned but before her eyes fell upon him there was a loud crackling pop beside her.

  A rock on the trail beside her exploded into powder. Bits sliced by her, leaving small cuts in her Rederni skirts and the skin within them. Had she done that? The shock of it broke through the ice.

  “Emotion and magic don’t mix,” said Tier softly, taking her hand. “Burying the anger and grief just makes it worse—haven’t you learned that much from Jes?”

  She closed her eyes. “I can’t be angry. I can’t grieve. I can’t—” She bit her lip. “Whining doesn’t seem to help either.”

  Hard arms closed around her and surrounded her with his scent and his warmth. “Let me help,” he said. “And I’ll let you help me, too.”

  He led her off the trail and through the trees to a small clearing with a small creek, soft grass, and shade. In that small private place he took her anger and his own, turning it to something else with touch and soft murmured words—something warm and alive and triumphant.

  Afterward, naked, breathless, sweaty, and temporarily at peace, Seraph said, “We are going to Colossae to find the wizards’ great library. Brewydd thought that was the advice she’d stayed alive to give us—such things have their own power. We’ll find what we need to fix what the Path has done to you. We’ll find the means to combat this new Shadowed. Then we’ll destroy him so that he will cause no more harm.”

  She didn’t tell him they didn’t know where Colossae was. She didn’t tell him that even if they managed to find the library, it was unlikely either she or Hennea would be able to find what they needed or even read it if they did. She didn’t tell him that even if they found everything Brewydd had told Lehr they might find, the chances that she could help Tier with it were poor. She didn’t tell him a Shadowed who had lived almost two centuries was unlikely to be easily dealt with. She didn’t have to—he already knew.

  “All right,” said Tier, his voice a comforting rumble under her ear. “Where do we start?”

  Jes was sitting on the bench on the porch when she and Tier returned. Although his face was still grey and drawn, he all but vibrated with repressed energy.

  “They’re all here,” he said. “Hennea, Phoran, and his guardsmen. Lehr woke up long enough to tell them about Colbern and Benroln’s clan, but he went back to sleep.”

  “Are you all right?” Tier asked. “Are you getting sick?”

  Jes shook his head. “Lehr got it first, and the Guardian cleaned the shadow from me when he cared for Lehr. Just tired. Too many people inside.”

  “You can stay outside,” Seraph told him. “Brewydd told us we needed to find Colossae, so we’re going to get out those maps and see if we can figure out where it is.”

  “I’ll come in,” he said. “The Guardian sometimes knows things that I don’t.”

  Seraph opened the case and, with the help of a dozen rocks to weigh down the corners, laid the maps out on the table where everyone could see them.

  Brewydd had told the boys that they needed to find Colossae if they wanted to save Tier and Phoran, though she hadn’t been certain just what it was in the city that would help them.

  Looking at the maps, Seraph was less optimistic than she had been. Other than the city map, there were four maps that had Colossae on them in the satchel Rinnie had found. Three of them were normal-looking, but the fourth was covered with so many lines it was hard to tell what was road and what was city. Even on the maps that were easily read, the roads and landmarks were a thousand years out-of-date.

  Tier surveyed his troops.

  “Between all of us,” he told them, “we’ve ridden over most of the Empire. We’re going to study these maps and see if anyone finds something familiar.”

  Jes sat down next to Hennea, but rose almost immediately to pace behind Hennea’s side of the table until Rinnie recruited him to help her make dinner. She gave him a few things to do, but when he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, she let him be. Good girl, thought Seraph.

  Lehr had retreated to the loft, and not even the noise of all the people in the room below him seemed to disturb his slumber.

  Phoran and his men argued quietly over the resemblance of a hill near Taela though nothing else on the map seemed to fit.

  Hennea, who had spent much of the last week searching through these maps, was composed and silent, much like Seraph herself, but Jes hadn’t been able to stay near her. Seraph wondered if the death of Benroln’s clan made her angry, too.

  Rinnie, who knew the Travelers only from stories, kept her eye on the boys while she cooked. She’d just gotten her brothers back and wasn’t going to chance losing them again.

  Seraph turned her attention to the map Tier had. After a while, with a few glances at the other maps, she picked out the slightly thicker lines that were the roads.

  “Maybe if we used Willon’s map,” said Tier. “It doesn’t have the whole of the Empire, but it covers a good two-thirds. And it’s mostly accurate as far as we’ve used it.”

  “What if this city isn’t in the Empire?” asked Rufort, the older of Phoran’s two guards.

  He was, perhaps, a year younger than Jes, and nearly as big as Toarsen’s comrade Kissel. Like Kissel, he gave the impression of a life hard-lived, but Seraph could see why Tier liked him so much.

  There was something solid about Rufort, as if he were a person who, once having given his word, would keep it at considerable cost to himself. This past week, he’d turned a willing hand to any of the farm chores Tier had give him.

  “Tradition places Colossae in the Empire,” said Hennea, without looking up from her map. “Unfortunately, there’s at least a six-century gap between the time when the Elder Wizards left the city and the founding of the Empire, so we can’t count on that.”

  The younger guard, Ielian, looked at the maps and shook his head. “What is this suppose
d to accomplish? Phoran came to you for help. Not to be dragged around the Empire on a seek-and-find game looking for a city that might never have existed. You don’t even know that there is still a city—or ever was one for that matter. It is just a story on the tongues of a couple of women.” He didn’t add the adjective silly to women, but it was in his voice.

  His eye caught Seraph’s, and he saw what she thought of his disparagement. Instead of backing down, he just got angrier. Since Seraph always did the same thing when she said something stupid, she had a certain amount of sympathy for him.

  “I thought we were waiting for the healer—” He aimed his accusation at Seraph. “But now your son says she is dead. If we do find Colossae, I suppose you will want us all to go there. But how does that help us kill this Shadowed, who needs to die to free the Emperor from your Traveler’s curse?”

  He knew a little more about Phoran’s problem than Phoran had thought—or maybe Phoran had explained it to Ielian and Rufort sometime this week.

  “It’s not a Traveler’s curse,” Seraph told him in an almost-gentle voice. “I could demonstrate the difference for you if you’d like.”

  “Behave, Seraph,” Tier said, and she was certain she was the only one who heard the amusement in his voice. He didn’t think she was serious. Perhaps he was right.

  “Ielian has reason for his worries.” Tier pushed his stool a little back from the table so he could see Seraph and Ielian at the same time—like a referee at one of the Harvest festival wrestling matches. “He doesn’t know Brewydd or Traveler magic, and we haven’t taken the time to explain them.”

  Seraph tapped her foot, but Tier had a point. She just wasn’t used to justifying herself—or being referred to as “silly” even if only by implication.

  “Fine,” she said. “First, the city exists beyond the legends. I am Raven, Ielian, and one of the things I can do is touch an item and get a feel for its history.”

  Behind Ielian, Phoran was watching her with vague eyes. She’d been learning that the expression really meant he was thinking very hard.