Raven s Strike

by Patricia Briggs

  “The Traveler word that translates into Common as Stalker also means the death of the prey that is stalked—not for food, but for the sheer love of destruction.” She shrugged unhappily. “That’s all anyone knows of it—just that the Colossae wizards named it the Stalker, then destroyed their lives in order to contain it.”

  “The Unnamed King nearly destroyed humankind.”

  Seraph nodded. “Mistwights live on small prey. They don’t play with their food like a cat might. The tainted one we found was deliberately terrorizing the smith because it enjoyed it. So perhaps the Stalker drives those who serve it to terrible deeds. Certainly death follows the Shadowed and those who are tainted.”

  “You said Benroln was shadowed,” said Tier.

  She nodded. “It’s unusual. Most of the shadow taint we Travelers see is still damage done by the Unnamed King.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I thought at first it was Volis who did it,” she told him. “He was certainly tainted himself—as were all the Masters of the Path. But my old teacher, Arvage, told me once that he thought the Stalker was constrained from forcing his will upon others, a constraint not faced by the Shadowed for some reason. If that is true, then it was the Shadowed who was responsible for the taint that stained the Path wizards and Benroln.”

  “What is the difference between a man who is shadow-tainted and one who is the Shadowed?”

  “A taint is imposed upon you,” Seraph said. “It takes little sins—buried resentments and angers—and builds upon those until they are pulled to the forefront. Bandor hit your sister—peace, Tier, it wasn’t his fault. I was just using that as an example of how much tainting can change a personality. If you fight the taint, it will eat away at you until you are little more than a beast and can no longer hide the madness. The Masters lived with it for years as far as I can tell.”

  “And the Shadowed?”

  “We don’t know how they are made. If we did, we might be able to stop it from happening again. All of the Shadowed have been wizards. I think they have to contact the Stalker in some fashion, perhaps there is a spell written in a solsenti book of magic somewhere. Or perhaps the Stalker is able to call a wizard who is suitable for his purposes. In any case the Shadowed willingly sacrifices the lives of people around him in order to gain power and immortality. I don’t know what the Stalker gains, or what it wants beyond death and destruction. Maybe that is enough. People who are tainted gradually grow mad over a period of a year or even just months, but the Shadowed doesn’t.”

  Tier was quiet, and after a moment, Seraph resumed her task of relieving his pain. It didn’t take much magic, just finesse.

  She touched a reddish splotch on his ribs that would be a bruise tomorrow and eased it with a caress of magic. Even battered as he was, she loved his body, sinewy and tough, bearing scars of war both old and new. When she’d finished with the spellworking she let her fingertips linger on his skin, trailing them over him slowly.

  She had him home. Home and safe at last.

  Her fingers trailed lower, and he caught her hand, murmuring, “If you want us to sleep tonight, I’d suggest you lie down beside me instead of petting.”

  She straddled his hips, the fabric of her underclothes a thin veil between her skin and his.

  “Mmm,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like you are interested in sleep just yet.”

  He laughed, a belly laugh that didn’t quite make it out of his mouth.

  “Don’t move,” she said, bending down until her lips just brushed his. “You might hurt yourself if you move.”

  A long, satisfying while later, Tier said, “I’ve missed that.”

  “Me, too,” she said. Reluctantly, she rolled out of the bed and dimmed the light. “It won’t go out all the way. None of the mermori rooms can be completely darkened—I think it has something to do with the nature of the illusion.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you a bit, and if it were dark, I don’t think I could stay awake.”

  “Oh?” She took her own bedroll out and spread the blankets over Tier before climbing back in beside him. With a sigh, she curled against the warmth of his body and yawned. “Talk fast.”

  “Tell me about Hennea,” he said.

  She lifted her head, but the light was behind him, and she couldn’t see the expression on his face. “Hennea?”

  He laughed. “If you could hear your voice. I’ve just noticed an odd thing or two, and since our son is so interested in her—I’d like to know more about her.”

  She settled back against him. “Odd things like what?”

  He laughed. “You tell me about her first,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you what made me ask.”

  “She’s a Raven of the Clan of Rivilain Moon-Haired,” Seraph began tentatively. “That’s a common heritage among Travelers. Last I heard, there are three or four of Rivilain’s clans in the Empire and several outside. She came to us—” She stopped. “Do you want me to go through the whole history? I’ve told it to you already.”

  “Tell me again, please,” he said.

  She shrugged. “She came to us because she’d figured out that the Path had you and had taken you to Taela. She’d watched them kill her lover. She wanted revenge, and she wanted to stop the Path.”

  “But she didn’t come directly to the farm on her own,” he said.

  “Right. She’d gone up to the place where you had supposedly died first. She was on her way here when the forest king put her to sleep, then sent Jes to bring her here.”

  “The forest king didn’t want her in his realm?” asked Tier neutrally.

  “I don’t know what he wanted,” said Seraph. “You ask him, and see if you can get a straight answer. If the forest king had thought she meant harm, I don’t think he’d have bothered getting Jes to bring her here.”

  Tier didn’t argue, so Seraph relaxed back against him again. “She helped me teach the boys what they could do while we were on our way to Taela. She saved Jes.”

  “You didn’t tell me about that. How?”

  “Do you know what a foundrael is?” she asked.

  “No . . . wait. Isn’t that the Guardian thing you told me about? The one that was supposed to keep the Guardian under control, but it drove them insane instead.”

  She nodded. “There were ten of them originally—nine now. Benroln—I told you how his clan was one of the ones who were preying upon solsenti. He felt he had reason enough for it; solsenti had killed his father and the rest of the clan’s Order Bearers. He thought he could force me to help him by taking Jes and holding him with a foundrael. While I dealt with Benroln, Hennea managed to destroy the foundrael.”

  “Not an easy task?” Tier’s voice was neutral.

  Seraph shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.”

  “Just how powerful is Hennea?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s no measuring stick for magic”—she frowned and continued irritably—“though solsenti wizards seem to think there ought to be. Training means as much as power, really—though less for Ravens than for wizards who don’t bear the Order. She’s been well trained; you can see it in her demeanor. People say ‘self-contained as a Raven,’ and that centered peacefulness of hers is what they’re referring to.” She couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of her voice.

  Tier heard it because he rubbed her nose playfully. “You do controlled well enough that most people don’t think you have a temper at all. Now, me, I enjoy a good screaming fight once in a while.”

  She laughed. “You do not. I have a miserably hard time picking a good fight with you.” She waited a heartbeat or two. “So what do you think of Hennea?”

  “How old is she?” he asked.

  It was not what she expected him to say, though it seemed to bother Hennea that she was older than Jes.

  “I don’t know,” she told him. “She looks about ten years younger than I am. Twenty-four or -five maybe? Their age difference is less
than ours.”

  He rolled until his shoulder was under her head. “I think she’s a good deal older than she appears.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s in her eyes. When my eyes aren’t reminding me of her apparent age, I feel that she is an old, old woman.”

  Seraph thought about what he’d said for a moment.

  “The control that Ravens strive for usually only belongs to the very old,” she told him. “I’ve seen it in other Ravens besides Hennea, though I’ve never managed to get it right.” People thought Seraph cold, she knew, but it was so hard to keep her emotions at bay—and if she didn’t, she would be very, very dangerous for everyone. Magic required a cool head, and her temper was too easily lit. “Hennea’s control is the reason, I think, that Jes can tolerate her touch when most people bother him.”

  “Magic can make people live longer,” said Tier. “I once met a seventy-year-old wizard who looked no older than forty.”

  “Wizardry, yes, but, as I told you, the Orders don’t work like that. Healers like Brewydd can perhaps extend their lives, but not past reasonable limits.”

  “You said that wizardry runs in the Traveler clans,” said Tier. “Could Hennea be a wizard, too?”

  Seraph sat up, crossed her legs, and stared at his face in the dim light. “You seem awfully certain that she’s old.” Owls could tell when someone lied, but that was as far as their truth-seeing went—or so she’d always supposed.

  “It’s just a feeling,” he said half-apologetically.

  “All of the Raven Bearers are wizards,” she told him. “Just as all Guardians are empathic. So, yes, Hennea is a wizard as well. But a Raven restricting herself to magic without using the Order . . . it would be like stuffing cotton in your ears to sing, Tier.”

  “I know difference between wizards and Ravens is that wizards use ritual magic and Ravens don’t have to,” said Tier. “But I’ve seen you use rituals.”

  Seraph nodded. “Right. Wizardry is knowledge, and Raven is intuition. That’s true as far as it goes, but it’s really just the end result of the difference rather the real difference. It’s like saying the difference between a dog and a cat is that a dog is obedient and a cat independent.”

  “Can you explain it to me?”

  She thought a moment. “I have a very loose analogy. Imagine magic is a bakery that allows only some people in to make bread. These people can neither smell nor taste.”

  “Hard to bake bread that way,” commented Tier.

  “Very hard. But they manage because they study the recipe books very carefully and learn to measure each cup of flour, each grain of sugar.”

  “Solsenti wizards.” Tier took one of her hands and played with her fingers.

  “Right. Now a few of these wizards were given a ring that allowed them to smell and taste.”

  “And the ring is called the Order of Raven.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But they could take off the ring.”

  Seraph rolled her eyes in exasperation and began speaking rapidly. “Only with caustic soap that burns. And the bakery is hot, so hot that some people die of it. Others learn to deal with the heat and manage to stay there a very long time—but only because all they do is bake bread, and they cannot leave or stop baking or they will die—those are the wizards who live centuries. But the ring protects you from all of the heat.”

  He threw an arm around her waist and rolled her under him as he laughed. “All right, all right. No Raven would think of working wizardry, and Ravens don’t live for centuries.”

  “That’s right,” said Seraph, burying her face against his neck. “So Hennea is not a century-old wizard—nor is she the Shadowed. We would know—Jes would know.”

  Tier rolled to his side and was still for a while. She thought he’d fallen asleep and was halfway there herself when he spoke again.

  “If Hennea joined you to help bring down the Path, why is she still here? Why isn’t she looking for her clan to rejoin them? You said that the Path didn’t kill them all, only her Raven lover.”

  Seraph started to answer him, but he continued. “It was Jes who made me question it. I think if she felt she was free to go, she would have left us as soon as she could simply because of Jes.”

  “What do you mean?” Seraph asked frowning. Tier was better with people than she was, but she was certain Hennea was attracted to Jes. “She likes Jes.”

  “She loves him,” he said, with a certainty Seraph didn’t feel. “Which is why she would leave if she could.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” She hated it when Tier did that. She didn’t doubt he was right—he usually was correct about people—she just hated it when he went out of his way to be obtuse, which was why he did it.

  Tier grinned, his teeth flashing in the dimly lit room. “Not to you, my love. You take the world and shake it into a form that suits you. Most of us have too much self-doubt. She’s worried about him. Not just that he’s too young, but that he is Guardian. He’s in the middle of a change—you must have noticed it.”

  “Yes.” Seraph sternly repressed the fear that thought caused her. “He switches back and forth more often, and it’s faster.” She said the next part fast as if that could keep it from being true. “And I don’t think the Guardian ever leaves entirely anymore.”

  “Jes, as Guardian, is the one who told us what lived in the smith’s well,” he told her. “He told me he smelled it. Has Jes ever encountered a mistwight?”

  Seraph’s fingers started to play nervously with the blankets. “Not that I know. There aren’t any around here, and we didn’t run into any on the way to Taela.”

  “That’s what I thought. I asked him how he knew, and the Guardian deliberately switched to our Jes just long enough to tell me he didn’t know, then switched back.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I think that if the Guardian had told me he didn’t know, he would have been lying.”

  “The Guardian knows things that Jes doesn’t know?” Seraph groped for Tier’s hand; when she found it she held it tightly. “That’s not a good thing. If Jes is to survive, he and the Guardian have to be one.” That’s what her father had told her Guardian brother anyway.

  “I’ll talk to him,” said Tier, as if talk could solve all problems.

  Seraph let it make her feel better anyway. For Tier, talk solved a lot more problems than it ever had for her.

  Tier tugged her until her head was on his shoulder, then pulled the bedding over her shoulders.

  Hennea loved Jes. Seraph was fairly certain that Jes felt the same way, though it was sometimes difficult to tell.

  “She’s never said so much, but I don’t think she has anywhere else to go,” Seraph told him. “I don’t know what Jes said to her to get her to come with us, though Lehr told me that at first she was going to go with Benroln. I know what would make her stay, though.”

  “What is that?”

  “Duty. She’s a Raven, Tier. She has responsibilities that supersede love and family. Somewhere out there is a Shadowed who wants to destroy you, my love. Doubtless he is hunting you down—and it is her duty to be here for the kill.”

  Tier laughed, bouncing her head gently. “His or mine?”

  “Go to sleep, you,” she scolded, to hide her worry.

  When she and Tier approached the house the next morning, the priest was sitting on the porch bench with his eyes shut.

  “You look tired, Karadoc,” said Tier, waving at some people who’d shouted greeting to him from the fields, where they were taking down tents.

  Karadoc’s bright brown eyes opened. “You’re a fine one to talk. From the way you’re walking, I’d say you’ve bruises to rival mine.”

  Tier tilted his head toward the fields. “Is it safe for them to return to Redern?”

  Karadoc smiled, a secret, pleased smile. “Ellevanal tells me that the village is safe, so I’ve told everyone to start packing. You’ll have your home back to yours
elves by nightfall.”

  Karadoc’s prediction was a little optimistic, and Seraph and Tier spent another night in Isolde’s mermora house. The villagers were more interested in celebrating their victory than in returning home. Then, too, Seraph thought, they were a little nervous about returning to the village. It would be a while before Redern felt safe to them again, despite Karadoc’s assurances.

  “Thank you again for watching Rinnie for us,” said Seraph, as she helped Alinath gather her things from the corner of the house where Lehr and Jes usually slept.

  It was the afternoon of the second day since they’d returned home, and Seraph was hopeful that they’d all sleep in their own beds tonight. To that end she’d sent her children and Tier out to encourage the stragglers to return to Redern.

  “Rinnie is a joy,” said Tier’s sister, folding a shirt neatly and setting it into a pack. “Until we came here, she helped us in the bakery.” She paused. “Thank you for finding my brother. If you and the Travelers hadn’t found him, he’d be dead.”

  Seraph shrugged uncomfortably. She didn’t know what to say to Alinath. The old animosity had faded, but she wasn’t certain what to replace it with.

  “Tier is resourceful,” she said at last. “Did he tell you he had the Emperor asking him for advice?”

  Alinath smiled, and the relief in the expression told Seraph that she was finding this no easier than Seraph herself. “Yes, he said something about it, but I thought he was exaggerating.”

  Seraph shook her head. “No. I’ve never heard him exaggerate about anything he’s done—usually just the opposite.”

  “Really?” Alinath thought about it a moment. “Did he really take all the young thugs and turn them into an army for the Emperor?”

  “They’re still thugs. Most of them anyway. But they adored Tier and fought for the Emperor for his sake. Tier has a way with young men.”

  “Speaking of young men,” said Alinath, “have you noticed the way that half of the village girls are swooning over Lehr? He’s a hero for fighting and killing that troll.”