Raven's Strike rd-2

by Patricia Briggs

  Since they had all spent yesterday exploring in the University District, they just walked straight through and found their way down the ramp into the lower city.

  “This is interesting,” said Rinnie.

  Phoran had to agree. They’d wandered through the Merchant’s District for an hour or so and encountered mostly houses, closed up and impossible to enter. But the street they’d been following as it wandered along the bottom of the cliffs that divided the city had taken a sudden turn and dumped them into the middle of a market square, just as Lehr had promised.

  “I’d sure like to get Lehr to Taela and watch him run a maze,” said Ielian slapping Lehr on the back. “I’d make a few golds on you, I’ll bet.”

  The market was paved with tiles rather than cobbles. Bright colors designed to raise a person’s spirits, Phoran thought, judging from his own reaction. Once, he supposed, the whole empty expanse had been covered in stalls and tents where food and goods were sold. They would have been put away for the night, he thought, or perhaps the day Colossae had died had not been a marketing day.

  “I’ve won a few bets in mazes,” Toarsen was saying. “Though this isn’t quite as interesting as the last thing I found in the middle of a maze.”

  “What was that?” asked Rinnie innocently.

  Toarsen’s smile dropped from his face. He cleared his throat. “A fountain. Uhm. With birds.”

  The most famous maze in Taela—at least among the young noblemen—was the one at the White Bird, a whorehouse that catered to the rich and bored. They held orgies in the largest of the parks inside the maze, but you could make assignations in the more secluded places, too. Phoran had done both a time or two.

  “I’ve never seen a maze,” said Rinnie, wistfully.

  “Come to Taela, Rinnie, and I’ll take you to some mazes.” Not the White Bird. “If Lehr wants to come to Taela, I’ll hire him to explore the palace for me—now that is a maze.”

  “I’ve been through enough mazes,” said Kissel. “Last one I had to cut through trees to get out.”

  “That was you?” asked Phoran, impressed. “I’d heard that the White Bird had to hire a wizard to undo the damage.”

  Kissel smiled, not a nice smile. “I don’t like being confined. They thought it was funny I couldn’t find my way out. So I did.”

  Phoran saw Rinnie examining Kissel as if he were more interesting than he’d been a few moments ago. “That sounds like something my brothers would do.”

  Kissel grinned, a startling sudden grin. “I thank you for the compliment, Rinnie Tieragansdaughter.”

  Rinnie shook her head. “No, the boys are called after their fathers and the girls after their mothers.”

  “Ah,” said Kissel. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Mother says it’s silly because that is not how the Travelers do it,” Rinnie said. “I think it is fun to be named after my mother. People are afraid of my mother. They don’t know that it’s Papa they ought to be most careful of.”

  “Look,” said Ielian, peering under the curtain blocked the nearest doorway. “Toys.”

  After the boys and Rinnie left, the camp was quiet. Tier was asleep, or dozing, at least, with his head in Seraph’s lap. Jes had disappeared; he was probably sleeping somewhere just outside of camp. Hennea was sitting cross-legged by the coals of their campfire meditating.

  Seraph hadn’t meditated in a long time, and it had never been easy for her—mindless peace was not her natural state. Nevertheless, she thought it might be a good idea since she was too wound up to sleep. So she straightened her spine and relaxed her shoulders.

  She didn’t really meditate, but she closed her eyes and blocked the rest of her senses so she could organize her thoughts. They had learned so much in such a short time, and she needed to let it all settle into place. Tier was safe. Hennea was the goddess of magic. Hinnum was alive and well. Tier was safe. Hinnum would come to help release the Orders from the rings. Hennea was the goddess of magic. Tier was safe.

  “You’re thinking awfully hard,” murmured Tier, from the vicinity of her lap.

  “Tier,” she said, without opening her eyes. “What do you think the Stalker wants?”

  “Why ask me?” he asked, his tone lazy and warm, like a cat in the sun. “Until yesterday afternoon, I didn’t even know what the Stalker really was.”

  “Yesterday when you were talking to Hinnum and you said there were three players in the story. Hinnum, Willon, and the Stalker. You had that last fit before you could tell us what you thought the Stalker’s motivations were.”

  She heard him take a deep breath and let it out in a tired sigh. “Hinnum taught Willon about the Orders, Seraph. But Hinnum didn’t think he taught Willon enough to allow him to steal them.”

  “I didn’t teach him how to see spirit,” said Hinnum. “I would have thought that was necessary to steal an Order.”

  Seraph opened her eyes and saw the old wizard standing in front of them. He’d had come upon them without her hearing. Or Jes hearing—which meant he’d used magic of some sort. Tier didn’t bother opening his eyes.

  Hinnum continued. “I spent all this morning and half the night—once I knew Tier’s music would appease the dead—trying to see how he could put what I taught him together and steal Orders from Travelers.”

  Seraph noticed Hennea had opened her eyes, but she stayed where she was.

  “I don’t see how he managed it,” Hinnum said. “I only knew because of what those fools had done to the Eagle. And because I helped the Raven to create the Orders in the first place. Willon is not a Raven, who can take the story of the Orders and know how it was done. At least he didn’t have access to a Raven’s power until after he’d already discovered how to steal the Orders. He’d have needed specifics. Rituals, words, and runes—something. I did not give them to him.”

  “Hinnum,” said Hennea.

  He turned to her and, to Seraph’s eyes, seemed to shrink a little. Then he caught himself, stood up straight, and looked her in the eyes. “I could not kill you, Raven. In all the centuries I paid my allegiance to you, there was only one thing you asked that I did not do. I could not do.”

  Tier opened his eyes during Hinnum’s speech, looked up at Seraph, and raised an eyebrow. Centuries? He asked without words. Raven? Is Hennea the Raven? Is that what Hinnum is saying? Twenty years of marriage allowed her to read all of that in his face.

  She nodded.

  “What a story,” he mouthed. “I knew she was old.”

  She smiled and touched her finger to her lips. “I’ll tell it to you later,” she mouthed back.

  He smiled and closed his eyes again. She couldn’t tell if he was going to sleep.

  “I don’t remember most of it very well even now,” Hennea told Hinnum, her face wearing its Raven mask. “Some things,” she said slowly, “are as clear as yesterday. I can see the Eagle’s face and hear his voice, but I don’t remember the Falcon or the Cormorant. When Seraph looked at Tier’s spirit, when she brought back the gem, I thought, ‘I remember how to do that.’ But there is much I ought to know that is simply a blank, fogged by time’s passage. I doubt I shall ever remember some of it.”

  Hennea stood up and left the fire so she could face Hinnum. “But I do remember you. I remember you beside me during the black days before Colossae’s end. I remember finding peace in the knowledge that I would die when Colossae did—because you promised to kill me. And you always fulfilled your promises.”

  Hinnum made a soft sound and turned away.

  “For four and a half centuries, Hinnum, you were a man of your word.” She touched his shoulder, and he cringed under her hand. “And this beautiful morning, I cannot find it in me to be anything but grateful for the one time you were not.”

  Tier sat up, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and looked at Hinnum. He rubbed his eyes again and looked some more.

  “I see why you chose to stay here,” he said after an awkward moment.

  Seraph looked, too, but Hinnum app
eared no different to her than he originally had. Which, she realized, was odd, because he’d told her that something had happened to his body that kept him from leaving Colossae with the other wizards. He must still be using an illusion, even if it was his own body he wore that morning.

  Hinnum lowered his eyebrows and looked down at Tier. “I love music,” he said heavily. “Last night you told the story of Shadow’s Fall with such power that I cried for the death of a man I never knew. Even so. Even so, Bards are the bane of my life. I am an illusionist, and Bards see truth.”

  Tier shook his head. Whatever he saw must have been bad, because his reply was without the touch of humor he usually threw in. “My apologies, Hinnum. I won’t reveal what you want hidden.”

  If Tier said he wouldn’t tell them what he had seen, he would not. If she was not to know what had happened to Hinnum, Seraph would rather talk about other, more important matters.

  “If you did not teach him how to steal the Orders, how did he find out?” she asked.

  “It was the Stalker,” said Tier.

  “The Stalker?” said Hennea.

  “Who else could it have been? I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

  “The Stalker is not evil,” Hinnum said.

  “I didn’t say that he was. You told us the Elder gods’ powers are constant, almost involuntary. If there are holes in the veil that keeps the Elder gods from destroying the world, then I believe it is possible for a wizard to feed off the Stalker’s power without the Stalker’s consent. You also told Seraph that the Stalker is caught behind the veil against his will.”

  Hennea took a seat beside Tier. “The Weaver told me the world was too old, too brittle for the stresses He and His brother would bring to it. Their powers would destroy it.”

  “The Weaver told me His brother did not care if the world died,” Hennea continued. “Death is a part of the Stalker’s power and is a natural process. But the Weaver loves His creation—so He found a way to bind them both and restrict Their powers so that His world could survive.”

  She patted the ground beside her, and Hinnum sat down as she began speaking again.

  “The substance of the veil is the power of both of the Elder gods: what else could restrain Them? If the Stalker had agreed, He and the Weaver could have re-created the veil Themselves after my consort died. Instead, the death of Colossae served as proxy for the power of the Stalker—taken from Him by force. The Weaver wove the other half of the veil Himself.”

  “The Stalker wants free,” said Seraph.

  “That’s what the Weaver told me on the night we decided that Colossae and her gods would die.”

  “So why would…” Seraph’s voice faded off as she saw what Tier had seen yesterday. “The Stalker couldn’t stop the Shadowed from feeding off his power, so he might as well make use of him. Willon was an illusionist, angry at the limits of his magic. So the Stalker offered to show him how to steal the power, of the Travelers. Why didn’t he tell him of the Guardian Order?”

  “A lot of the Ordered gems don’t work,” said Hennea slowly. “If the Elder god chose to show Willon how to steal the Orders, he would certainly do a better job of it.”

  “No,” said Tier. “Because the Stalker doesn’t care if the Orders are useful or not. He just wants them bound to inert objects rather than Order Bearers. Because the Orders do serve a purpose.”

  “They keep the balance,” Hinnum said. “Without the balance to anchor it, the veil will fail, and the Elder gods emerge.”

  “Ah,” said Hennea thoughtfully, “If Willon wore one of each of the Orders, he could draw on the power of both of the Elder gods instead of just the Stalker. The Stalker ensures he never attains that goal by making certain the Shadowed cannot have all six. Many of the Ordered stones do not work—the Lark not at all so far as we know—and the Shadowed doesn’t know about the Guardian Order.”

  “Clever people, those Colossaen,” said Toarsen, as they left the Owl’s temple.

  It was later than it ought to have been, because they’d spent a couple of hours in the Merchant District, where the entrances to the shops had been curtains rather than doors. Most of the curtains left a space above the floor that they could slide under.

  Some of the shops had been just like their counterparts in Taela, some had not. Phoran had been particularly struck by the mercantile that had fabrics the like of which he’d never seen before. There were brocades and velvets, but also some sort of shiny fabric with a luster like a silk, but it changed colors from gold to green, depending on what angle he viewed it from.

  Toarsen teased Phoran because of his fascination with some of the more exotic fabrics—but he’d always had a flair for fashion and saw no need to change his mode of dress simply because he’d become respectable. His only regret was due to the nature of the spell holding Colossae, all of the fabrics were stiff as wood, and it was impossible to tell how they would feel against skin.

  “They had knowledge that was too dangerous,” continued Toarsen, and Phoran pulled himself away from his daydream. Some men dream of fair women, he thought with self-directed humor; he dreamed of fabrics.

  “Speaking the true names of the gods is a bad thing—” Toarsen continued as self-appointed lecturer. “—but not being able to call upon them if you needed to was equally bad. So they engraved the names on the Owl’s dais backward and colored it so most of the indentations aren’t easily seen. Then we come along with a white shirt—”

  “My white shirt,” said Rufort in a not-quite-whining tone. “I hope that char comes out because I only brought one other shirt.”

  “I can clean it,” said Rinnie, sounding resigned. “Mother can, too—but she’ll give the chore to me. She doesn’t like laundry or sewing.”

  “At least she doesn’t make you butcher the pig,” said Lehr.

  “—With Rufort’s white shirt,” continued Toarsen cheerfully over the top of all the others, “and a charred piece of firewood, and now we have the names of the gods.” He held the shirt up so they could see them more clearly.

  “Ielian,” called Lehr, “you’re going the wrong way.”

  Phoran looked away from the shirt and saw Ielian ahead of them. He must have kept walking while Toarsen paused to admire the rubbings on Rufort’s shirt. Ielian must not have heard Lehr’s call because he disappeared down the street he’d chosen without pausing.

  “Remind me not to bet on Ielian if he decides to run in a maze race,” said Kissel in disgust. “I suppose we’d better go get him.” He looked down. “Come, Rinnie Tieragansdaughter, let’s go rescue Ielian.”

  “It’s Seraphsdaughter,” she told him in a patient voice.

  He nodded. “But Tier is the one people really need to worry about—and I suspect that there will be a lot of young men worried about you one of these years, lady.”

  Rinnie looked pleased.

  They came to the street Ielian had taken and found him engrossed in the elaborate carving on the door of a house that stood next to a narrow ally.

  “Ielian,” called Phoran. “Lehr says this is the wrong way.”

  “You have to come here,” he replied. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  They were within a few yards of Ielian, who was still absorbed in whatever had caught his attention, when Phoran saw Lehr stiffen, sniffing the air.

  “What’s wrong, Lehr?” Phoran asked.

  “Run!” said Lehr, his voice urgent.

  “Stop,” said another, almost-familiar voice.

  Phoran, who would have rather followed Lehr’s advice, found himself helpless to do anything except follow the second command. His body refused to move.

  “We should try an easy one first.”

  Seraph had the Ordered gems spread out on a blanket from her bedroll. She began sorting them quickly into piles according to Order. Hennea, sitting on the other side of the blanket, began helping.

  “I meant to ask,” Seraph inquired as she put a ruby necklace in the Falcon’s pile. “Why
are there so many fewer Larks than, say, Ravens?”

  “For magic to work,” Hennea answered, “the Order could be a very small part of the Raven’s power. It is the ability to work magic—not magic itself. So there are more Ravens, each with the smallest part of a god of any Order—and it is Raven who is most easily bound to the gems. Healing is different. There were always only a few Larks, because a lesser gift would not have functioned.”

  “So the Lark gems failed,” Seraph said. “As they were meant to fail.”

  She used her seeing spell so she could see spirit again. The small pile of Lark gems lit up with spirit, brighter by far than any of the others.

  “Their Order holds more tightly to the spirit,” she told Hennea. “And so the rings behave as if they are haunted.” She picked up the tigereye that used to warm to her touch. “I wonder if this is my daughter’s Order?” she asked.

  Tier’s hands closed over her shoulders, as Hinnum said, “I don’t think there’s a way to tell.”

  “We should begin with the Ravens,” said Hennea. She picked up a brooch set with a pale green peridot that had only the faintest wisp of spirit.

  Some of the gems were still in their settings, but others had been in armbands or heavy jewelry that were bulky and made them difficult to conceal. They, Hennea, Brewydd, and she, had pried the stones out of the largest settlings.

  Seraph watched Hennea coax the bit of blue out of the violet Order.

  “There’s a little bit more,” Hinnum said, peering closely at the brooch. “Yes, right there.”

  “Now,” said Hennea. “Do you think that breaking the stone is enough, or do we have to unwork the spell binding the Order to the gem?”

  “Unworking the spell is safer,” said Seraph, setting down the tigereye ring in a pile all its own. Hinnum was right, there was probably no way to know for certain if the tigereye held Mehalla’s Order and part of her spirit.