Raven's Shadow rd-1

by Patricia Briggs

  “What’s going on here?” said an authoritative voice—and a young man pushed his way through the crowd.

  Ash-pale hair in a waist-length braid announced his Traveler bloodlines as well as a written sign. Soon he had a wide circle around him.

  “Look by the road, Mother,” whispered Jes.

  Seraph looked, and sure enough, there was an entire Traveling clan waiting on alert.

  Silence had fallen, mostly because the solsenti group hadn’t yet noticed the Travelers beside the road and didn’t know what to make of a man whose arm hung unmoving in the air.

  “Well,” he said again, “What goes on here?”

  “I am Seraph,” she said. “Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent. This one’s half-grown sons offered insult to my young friend. We were discussing the issue.”

  The stranger tilted his head at the man’s arm. “Interesting discussion?”

  “No,” said Seraph. “I was almost finished. If you’ll excuse me a moment.” She turned to the man. “I have no more patience with you. I curse you and your sons that if you ever hit a woman or child, you’ll lose the use of that which men value most. Now go.”

  She released his arm and met the eyes of the few solsenti inclined to linger.

  The stranger waited until they were gone before he started laughing. “I’m no Raven, but even so I could tell there was no magic to power that curse.”

  She smiled. “It doesn’t need magic, does it?” If any of them ever hit a woman or child they’d remember her words and worry about it. Worry could achieve the effect she wanted more easily than magic.

  “Who are you?” asked Jes, breaking into the shared moment.

  “Ah, my apologies, sir. I am Benroln, Cormorant and Leader of the Clan of Rongier the Librarian.” He bowed shallowly. “If we may join you in your eating we might exchange stories.”

  “Come and be welcome,” agreed Seraph.

  There was a fair bit of confusion as the Clan of Rongier organized a meal stop and the solsenti group packed hastily and left, most eating the remains of their meals in one hand while they started out.

  The fear on their faces didn’t bother Seraph nearly as much as the catcalls that came from the Librarian’s clan. Her father would never have stood for such a thing, but Benroln was young, and perhaps he felt much the same as the young people who teased the solsenti. Still there were older heads about, and Seraph thought that someone should have said something.

  A glance at the clan’s wagons and clothing told her that having a young leader hadn’t hurt the clan materially, even if their manners had suffered. Their clothing was without holes or mending and their wagons were all freshly painted.

  Seraph’s small family stayed close to her as the strange clansmen laid out food and attended to the chores of meal preparation. Doubtless the boys were intimidated by the foreign tongue and sheer volume of noise so many people set to a single task could make. Seraph finished the last of her meal as Benroln approached her with three other men.

  “Seraph, this is my uncle, Isfain,” he said, indicating the eldest of the men. “My cousin, Calahar” was a young man with unusual raven-black hair. “Kors” had reached middle age and middle height with slightly stooped shoulders.

  “This,” continued Benroln, “is Seraph, Raven of Isolda the Silent, and her family. This young man here is Eagle.”

  The older man Benroln had introduced as Isfain smiled. “Well blessed in the Order your family is. Will you introduce them?”

  There was nothing in the words they spoke to raise Seraph’s suspicions, but there was just a little extra stress in Benroln’s voice when he named the Orders. That stress had been answered with a thread of smugness in Isfain’s voice.

  Seraph bowed her head. “This is my son, Jes, Eagle. My son Lehr, and my friend Hennea.” No one had ever accused Seraph of being a trusting soul. She couldn’t hide the Orders Benroln had noted, but there was no need to share information unnecessarily. Time enough to clear the matter up if necessary once Seraph knew more about the Clan of Rongier.

  “May I inquire how it is that there are so few of you?” asked Kors diffidently. “I had heard that the Clan of Isolda the Silent fell to the sickness years ago.”

  Seraph nodded graciously. “Only my brother and I survived. When my brother died we were left without kin.” Two decades of living with solsenti had not lowered her awareness of the disgrace of what she had done—so she lifted her chin, daring any of them to comment. “I married a solsenti man and we lived with him and his family until he died this spring. His relatives turned us out—but they did not know that he had investments in Taela. We are headed there to recover his monies.”

  The men considered what she told them. For a Traveler to marry or even lie with solsenti was expressly forbidden. It happened, but a very strict clan leader could punish the offender with banishment or death.

  Only Kors looked taken aback, and Benroln tapped him on the shoulder before he could say anything.

  Isfain merely said, in tones of apparent delight, “Ah, we take the same road. Our clan has business that lies along the road to Taela, and we have friends in the city who are willing to aid us. We’d be more than pleased to lend you escort until our roads part.”

  There was no way out of Isfain’s generous offer without offense, so Seraph nodded. “Your escort would be most welcome.”

  Calahar glanced over at Skew and then moved toward him. “Nice horse,” he said.

  “My husband’s warhorse,” replied Seraph. “Careful. He’s old now. But he was trained not to let strangers approach too closely.”

  “I’ve only seen a few horses with his coloration,” he said. “Your husband get him as a war prize?”

  “Yes.”

  “Too bad he’s a gelding.”

  “Yes,” replied Seraph. “But he serves us well as it is. Lehr, would you check to make sure we’ve gotten everything packed?”

  Hennea waited until they were walking again and the fuss of adding new members had died down before approaching Seraph.

  “You were less than forthcoming,” Hennea said quietly. “And Skew’s never objected to me.”

  “But they don’t need to know that. I’d rather not have people ruffling through our packs. There’s something off about this clan,” Seraph replied. “Though it’s been a long time since I walked with Travelers, so perhaps I’m misreading something.”

  “Perhaps you are right to be suspicious,” agreed Hennea thoughtfully. “They certainly aren’t going to be looking for Lehr and I to be Ordered, not when they know that two of us are Order-Bearers. Although if they have a Raven who looks at us, they’ll know what you are up to.”

  “I’ve been looking,” said Seraph. “The only Order-Bearer I’ve seen is Benroln himself.”

  “I suppose there will be no harm done,” said Hennea.

  “No harm to whom?” asked Benroln.

  Seraph carefully maintained her smile. “To us. It’s a relief to find a clan to journey with—but it bothers me that we might need your protection. This is a main road, there should be no danger for Travelers here—but I worry all the same.”

  “It’s not just those hotheaded men either,” said Benroln in grim tones. “There hasn’t been a Gathering in a long time. The last one was disrupted by solsenti soldiers, and the clans felt that another Gathering might just be setting ourselves up for a solsenti sword. The illness that swept through our clans twenty years ago took out more than just your clan. If the solsenti have their way, in another twenty there will be no Travelers at all.”

  The clipped note in his voice when he said “solsenti” reminded her forcibly of the way some of the more frightened Rederni said “magic.”

  “Then it is their doom,” said Hennea indifferently. “Travelers exist to keep the solsenti from paying the price of a failure that was not theirs.”

  “What failure?” said Benroln explosively, but Seraph saw calculation in his eyes. He was playing to his audience. “A story natt
ered at by the elderly? It is only a story—and it was old before the Shadow’s Fall. It’s a myth, and no more accurate than the twaddle the solsenti spout about the gods. There are no gods and there was no lost city. There is no evil Stalker. We have paid and paid for a crime committed in an Owl’s tale. If we don’t wise up we’ll be nothing more than a solsenti minstrel’s tale ourselves, something told to frighten small children.”

  “Wise up and do what?” asked Seraph.

  “Survive,” he said. “We need to keep food in our mouths and clothes on our backs. We need to teach the solsenti to leave us alone—as you did to that solsenti bastard who tried to injure Hennea.” He paused, then said softly, “You taught that man and his sons to leave us be. If you had allowed your Eagle to teach them, the rest of the solsenti in that group would have taken the story to his village and they all would have trembled in fear.”

  “Maybe someone did,” said Seraph coolly. “Maybe that’s why, instead of welcoming us and looking to us to help them when my brother took us into the village years ago, the villagers feared us so much that they burned my brother.”

  “The solsenti already fear us, that is the problem,” said Hennea. “Fear leads to violence. The villagers who killed Seraph’s brother were very afraid and too ignorant to know that they had nothing to fear from a Traveler. Perhaps because, in the last few generations, we have taught them that they should fear us.”

  “Rot,” said Benroln curtly before turning his attention back to Seraph. “You have lived among them for what?” He glanced at Jes and Lehr and came up with an accurate guess, “Twenty years or more? You are beginning to sound like one of them—or worse, one of the old ones who sit around the fire and say, ‘We are supposed to protect them.’ ” The anger in his voice was honest now. “Let them protect themselves. They have wizards.”

  “Who are helpless against the evil we fight,” said Seraph.

  Benroln’s lip curled. “When solsenti soldiers caught my father and our Hunter and Raven out alone, there was nothing we could do but bury them. Had my father not believed the old folktales, he could have taught that village what harming a Traveler might mean. When those villagers killed your brother—you could have saved him. Could have made them so afraid that the thought of harming one of us would never occur to them again. How many of us died because you didn’t teach them what you taught that man today? How many more will die because you didn’t loose the talons of your Eagle upon them instead of tricking them into thinking you’d set a spell on them?”

  Part of Seraph agreed. Part of her had wanted to burn the village to the ground. She had spent most of that first night at Tier’s side wondering how long it would take her to get back to the village and avenge her brother.

  She could have killed them all.

  “Your father was killed?” said Hennea softly, taking Benroln’s arm in sympathy and distracting him from Seraph.

  He nodded, his anger dissipating under Hennea’s attention. “Our Clan Guide took us to the Sept of Arvill’s keep. My father said that they’d never admit a whole clan, so he, who was Raven, took our other Raven—my cousin Kiris who was only fifteen—and our Hunter to see what was amiss. They didn’t even make it to the gate of the keep before they were shot from ambush.”

  “Terrible,” agreed Seraph. “When I think about that village where my brother was killed, I think of how helpless they would have been against my power. I think of the children who lived there, and the mothers and fathers. More death never solves a crime, no matter how regrettable.” She tried to keep her tones conciliatory, but she could not agree with him.

  Benroln met her gaze for a moment, then dropped his head in the respectful bow of a vanquished opponent. “And so I learn from your wisdom.”

  Lehr, who’d come upon them as Seraph had been giving her last speech, snorted and then grinned at Benroln. “She knows better than that. That’s what she always said to Papa when she didn’t want to agree with him but he was winning the argument.”

  Seraph smiled gently. “We can agree to disagree.”

  The Travelers were a highly organized people—just like a well-trained army, and for the same reasons. Every person had an assigned role.

  Seraph hadn’t realized, not really, how independent the life that they’d led in Redern had been. As long as the Sept’s tithes made it to him, they were left largely alone to do as they wanted. If she’d been married to another Rederni man, that might have meant that she would have been at his mercy. But Tier was Tier. He’d sought her advice, and she’d worked shoulder to shoulder with him both in the fields and in the kitchen. She’d grown used to the freedom of making her own decisions.

  When Isfain had pointed to a place and told her to make camp there, she’d nearly told him where to take his orders. If she hadn’t caught Lehr watching her expectantly, Seraph would have done just that. Instead she’d just nodded and gotten to work.

  At least they accorded Seraph some leeway for being Raven, and clan leader, if only just of her family plus Hennea. Lehr they treated like a green boy—Tier had never treated him so. She just hoped he was enough his father’s son to hold his peace until she’d had time to learn more about this clan: they might be a great help in retrieving Tier.

  Seraph pitched in to help prepare the evening meal. Some of the men tended horses and goats, some set out to fish, and a smaller group set out into the forest to see what game they could find. Jes and Lehr joined the latter group. She’d had time to talk with Lehr, and Seraph knew he wouldn’t give himself away. He didn’t care for Benroln much either.

  “My Kors told me that you married a solsenti,” said the woman on Seraph’s left, while her clever fingers and sharp knife were making short work of deboning one of the rabbit carcasses that were the basis for tonight’s meal.

  There was such studied neutrality in the words that Seraph didn’t reply, pretending that skinning her own rabbit took up all of her attention.

  “What was it like?” said the woman on the other side of her with hushed interest. “I’ve heard that solsenti men—”

  She was quickly hushed by several of the other women who were giggling as they chided her.

  “Would you look at this!” exclaimed a woman in gravelly tones. Seraph turned and saw a tiny, ancient crone approaching the tables set up to prepare food. Her hair was pale yellow and thin; it hung in a braid from the crown of her head to her hips. Her shoulders were stooped and bent, and her hand as knobby as the staff she balanced herself with. “You’d think you’d never had a man before the way you act here! She is a guest. Ah, you embarrass the clan.”

  “Brewydd,” said the woman who had begun the conversation. “What brings you here?”

  “Brewydd?” said Seraph, setting down the naked rabbit carcass and wiping her hands on the apron someone had given her. “Are you the Healer?” Even twenty years ago, Brewydd the Healer had been ancient.

  The old woman nodded. “That I be,” she said. “I know you child—Isolda’s Raven. The one who survived.”

  The woman on Seraph’s right put aside the food she was working with and hurried over to tuck her hand under Brewydd’s arm and lend support. “Come, grandmother. You need to get off your feet.” Scolding gently and prodding, the woman took Brewydd away toward a wagon built up on all four sides and roofed like a small house on wheels—a karis it was called for the kari, the Elders, who were the only Travelers who rode in them.

  “Raven,” said the old woman, stopping for a moment to turn back and look at Seraph. “Not all shadows come from the evil one.”

  “People can be evil all on their own,” agreed Seraph.

  Satisfied with Seraph’s reply, the old woman tottered back to her karis.

  “She can still heal,” said the woman on Seraph’s left. “But she’s a little touched. It’s the years, you know. She won’t tell anyone how old she is, but my Kors is her great-grandson.”

  Three days of travel with Rongier’s clan taught Seraph a lot about them. Benroln and th
e old Healer were the only Ordered among them, though they had a few who could work magic in the solsenti fashion—with words and spell casting that hoped to gather enough stray magic to accomplish their task.

  It was most remarkable, she thought, watching as a young man named Rilkin used a spell to light a damp log, that they got any results at all. Her father had been gifted that way, and they’d spent many a Traveling day exploring the differences between her magic and his. A solsenti spell cast out a blind net into the sea to haul in whatever stray magic might attach itself to the net; Ordered magic was more like putting a pail in a well.

  She turned back to grooming Skew and to her current worries. Tier she could do nothing about until they reached Taela, so she tucked her fear for him away until it might be useful. Lehr and Jes were more immediate concerns. They were growing more and more unhappy with the continued association with the Traveling clan.

  Skew stretched his neck out appreciatively when her brush rubbed a particularly good spot. Skew, at least, was having the time of his life with all the attention he was getting.

  Lehr, however, chafed under the commands that all of the men and most of the women of the clan felt free to throw at him. Without hinting at what he was, he couldn’t win their respect by his hunting skills so they treated him as they treated all the other young men.

  No one gave Jes orders—they all knew what he was. Her daylight Jes was bewildered by the way they lowered their eyes around him and avoided him. Seraph didn’t remember her clan treating her brother, the Guardian, that way. The Librarian’s clan hurt Jes’s feelings by their rejection, and that made the Guardian restless: Jes was one of the people he protected.

  Hennea helped. She knitted in the evenings, and found things that required Jes’s aid. He was calmer around her, too; perhaps it was the discipline of being Raven that made Hennea easier for Jes to bear. Some people, like Alinath, were hard for him to be in the same room with.

  “Mother?” It was Lehr. “Have you seen Jes? He was with me at dinner, but someone decided they needed a dray mule and I was the nearest they could find. When I went back to the dining tables, Jes wasn’t there. I checked the horses and he wasn’t there either. Hennea was looking for him, too. He’s not in the camp, Mother. I told Hennea I would check with you.”