Raven's Strike rd-2 Page 10

  Hennea nodded.

  “Thank you, Karadoc,” Seraph said, getting to her feet.

  He laughed. “I’m glad to be helpful.” He tipped his head to the temple behind him. “They won’t let me clean,” he said. “I was feeling old and useless.”

  “Let them clean,” said Seraph. “I have it on the best authority that if it weren’t for you, a lot more people would have been killed.”

  “Whose authority would that be?” he asked.

  She smiled at him. “He says you play skiri well.”

  He paused and looked at her thoughtfully before gifting her with a secretive smile. “Maybe your informant is right.”

  “So sit and rest,” she told him. “Enjoy the fruits of your labors for a day or two more. They’ll work you hard enough later. I expect that attendance at Ellevanal’s temple is due for an increase.”

  He laughed. “That may be, daughter. That may be.”

  “Shadowed,” said Hennea, when they’d left Ellevanal’s temple behind them.

  “Karadoc is not tainted,” said Lehr.

  “Ellevanal is not of the shadow,” agreed Seraph. “He’s been Jes’s friend for years. But Hennea knows that already.”

  “What’s wrong?” Seraph heard Rinnie ask Jes. “Why is Hennea so upset?”

  “Ellevanal shadowed that priest,” said Hennea, keeping her gaze firmly on the road before them.

  “What?” asked Lehr. “The forest king isn’t of the shadow. Jes and I would know.”

  Seraph sighed. “The Colossae wizards knew how to ride in the heads of others. They called what Ellevanal did with Karadoc welaen. Shadow, the kind of shadow that you see on a sunny day is laen. Welaen then, translates best into Common as ‘shadowing.’ Its meaning to the Elder Wizards was broader and encompassed a whole range of magical ability. For us, only the touch of the Stalker or the Shadowed brings shadow-tainting.” She directed that at Hennea.

  “What your Mother means,” said Hennea, “is that the Colossae wizards could ride with unsuspecting people or simply take over their bodies without permission—just as the Stalker does. Because of the misuse of welaen, the Colossae wizards forbade it—and there wasn’t much that they forbade.”

  Seraph had forgotten the endless debating about what kind of magic was allowable. It came, she supposed, because the lack of morality among the Colossae wizards had destroyed the city and began the endless guilt-bound wandering of the Travelers. The other Orders just used their abilities as they could, but Ravens must endlessly debate about what was right and proper.

  “Here is the bakery,” Seraph said, with something like relief. She’d always been a practical Raven, especially after her teacher died and she became her clan’s only Raven. Whatever it took to survive was not a moral line she expected Hennea would approve of.

  They found Tier elbow deep in dough. He listened as Seraph explained what they were going to do.

  “I’ll follow you in a couple of hours. We’ve a lot of hungry folk to feed.”

  Seraph leaned over and kissed him lightly, careful to keep out of the flour. “You’ll do no such thing. I won’t have you climbing the mountainside with your knees still healing. When you’re through here, why don’t you wait for us at the tavern?”

  He thought about arguing, she saw it in his eyes. “Fine,” he said instead. “Just you be cautious up there. I don’t want to have to trek up there and find our Jes as a frog.”

  “Can’t do frogs,” said Jes seriously. “Can’t do horses either. Only animals with fur and fangs.”

  They started back up the streets. Since Redern was dug into the side of a mountain, new buildings had to be built above the rest of the village, and Volis’s temple was the newest building in Redern.

  “Maybe Jes shouldn’t be here,” Hennea said. “There’s a lot of people.”

  Seraph had been keeping an eye on him as well. She’d have left him home, but he wouldn’t stay without them. He wasn’t paying attention to them now, just staring at the ground with a distracted air.

  “If you wrap a sprain for too long, you ruin the joint,” said Lehr.

  “What?”

  “I mean,” Lehr explained, “if Jes doesn’t ever come to town—pretty soon he won’t be able to.”

  “Jes,” said Seraph, touching his sleeve.

  He looked up with a jerk.

  “Do you need to go home?” she asked. “Are the people too much for you?”

  “No, Mother.” Jes shook his head. “I’m all right. Everyone is so excited today it feels like I have bees in my head. But we think it wouldn’t be a good thing to leave you alone in the new temple.”

  He used “we” just as the priest had. Lehr started to speak, and Seraph held up a finger for quiet so she could solidify her first, nebulous thought. There was a connection between shadowing and the way the Guardian Order worked, she could almost see how it was so.

  Ellevanal had shadowed the priest. Was that the same kind of magic that caused the Orders to attach themselves to Travelers? She closed her eyes and thought, trying to work her way through an instinctive affirmative. The binding between the priest and Ellevanal had been temporary, but the Orders were permanent.

  “I can see the Orders,” she murmured out loud to clarify her thoughts. “But I can’t see shadowing. I wonder if Lehr or Jes would have been able to tell that the forest king was riding inside Karadoc’s skin? Or is it the evil of the Stalker’s presence that they sense.” That felt right.

  “You think there is a connection between the Orders and shadowing?” said Hennea.

  Seraph nodded and opened her eyes. “I think they are similar magics. Not twins or complements, but certainly in the same family of magics. Maybe, when you and I try to study the Order-bound gems again, we need to study the shadowing that the Elder Wizards did. There are books about shadowing in most of the mermori libraries. Isolde had four or five I’ve glanced through.”

  Hennea stared into the summer sky for a moment. “Yes, you’re right.”

  Perhaps Hennea meant it to come out as if she’d just come to the same conclusion. But to Seraph, it sounded suspiciously as if she’d known all along.

  “How long have you known?” Seraph snapped.

  Seraph, Hennea, and Brewydd had spent days trying to discover what the Path had done to bind the Orders to their gems. There was nothing in any of the libraries on the Orders; they had been created after the Colossae wizards had left and were no longer writing down their studies. If Hennea had known there was a connection between shadowing the Colossae wizards had used and the Orders, she should have told them.

  Hennea met Seraph’s gaze. “A while. But I couldn’t find anything specific. The wizards wrote a lot about how to get themselves into another person’s mind and how to shield themselves from such abuse perpetrated by another wizard. Nothing useful in our situation.”

  “But you didn’t mention it to Brewydd or me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was not useful.”

  “Or so you thought,” Seraph said icily.

  There was a connection, she could feel it; but that wasn’t what bothered her. Tier liked to tease her about the secretive nature of Ravens, but Seraph had never had that facet of her Order turned on her before. She didn’t like it. She’d become a Rederni—people who kept secrets couldn’t be trusted.

  Tier’s suspicions of Hennea rattled around in Seraph’s head, but she couldn’t see any pattern to them. “Tier thinks you are older than you look.”

  “Why should he think that?” It was Hennea’s turn to speak coldly.

  It wasn’t an answer, and Seraph had been a parent too long not to hear the evasion and the attempt to divert the conversation away from Hennea and direct it onto Tier.

  “Mother?” said Jes.

  He was swaying from one foot to another as he watched Seraph’s face unblinkingly.

  “I have questions for you,” she told Hennea. “But they will wait for another time. Jes
, it’s all right.”

  “You are angry,” he said.

  “Mother’s angry a lot,” Rinnie told him. “Unless she’s angry with you, it’s all right.”

  Jes looked down at his sister. “Not at Hennea.”

  “Well,” she said conscientiously, “you’re right. I still wouldn’t worry. She can do what I do, keep out of Mother’s way until she calms down.”

  Lehr glanced at Seraph’s face, and she thought she saw him hide a small smile before he turned to Rinnie, and said, “This might be a better conversation to have when Mother’s not here.”

  Seraph brooded as she climbed. But the conclusions that she had come to earlier still held. Hennea was merely a Raven with secrets—and that was bad enough.

  Willon’s shop, the last building before the temple, was dark and empty when they went past it.

  “He must still be in Taela,” Lehr said, breaking the uneasy silence. “I’d forgotten that he went there, too. He was going to help us. I hope he’s not still there waiting for us.”

  “He could hardly help but hear that a band of Travelers rescued the Emperor,” said Seraph dryly. “I’m sure that he knows who that was. Though if I’d thought of it, I would have sent him a message before we left. He goes back to Taela every year to check on his family anyway. He didn’t go there just to help us—though he would have if we’d asked. But we didn’t need gold or information, just magic and swords; and those aren’t something a merchant could help us with. He’ll be back soon.”

  They climbed past the storefront and up the steep trail that led to the abandoned temple of the Path of the Five.

  The temple burrowed deep into the heart of Redern Mountain, leaving only its head to mark where the bulk of it hid.

  One door lay several feet from the temple, and the other was leaned neatly against a wall. It looked as though the troll had decided to investigate the temple, though when Seraph glanced around she saw no other sign of the creature. Then she remembered that Karadoc told her Ellevanal had used him to rip open the doors and was amazed he’d come out with no more than torn fingernails.

  Seraph stopped just outside the entrance. “Would you check this to see if it is shadow-tainted, Lehr?”

  “I already did. There’s no shadowing I can sense.”

  “Jes?”

  He didn’t answer, and when Seraph looked for him, he was staring down at the roof of Willon’s store which, because of the steepness of the mountain, jutted out of the ground only a few feet below where he stood.

  “Jes?” Hennea reached out, but stopped just short of touching him. “Are you all right?”

  He turned his face away from her and looked at Seraph. “There’s nothing here,” he said shortly. “Volis is dead. The forest king and Karadoc took care of the rest. Lehr says there is nothing here—why do you bother to ask me?”

  Jes was usually cheerful unless the Guardian was present. He was very seldom sullen or moody.

  “Hennea, take Rinnie and Lehr into the temple, Jes and I have some things to talk over,” Seraph said, forgetting for a moment she wasn’t just talking to one of her children. “Please,” Seraph added hastily when Hennea stiffened. “We’ll join you in a few minutes.”

  She waited while they filed in. Then she turned her attention to Jes, who had gone back to staring at Willon’s roof.

  She debated simply waiting until he was ready to talk—but this was Jes. It might be days before he was ready, and she didn’t have Tier’s patience.

  “What’s wrong, Jes?”

  “Nothing is wrong.” He didn’t look at her, but she could see the stubborn set to his jaw.

  Tier was better at this sort of thing than Seraph, but he wasn’t here. She thought back over the climb up Redern and tried to pinpoint when Jes’s discomfort at being surrounded by so many people had turned to anger.

  “Hennea is entitled to her secrets,” Seraph said tentatively.

  “Of course.” The words were clearly enunciated, but Seraph knew that the Guardian was still at rest because she felt none of the dread that came with his presence.

  “I don’t like it when she hides things that might be important,” she tried. She couldn’t tell if he was angry at her or Hennea.

  “Sorry.”

  Seraph picked up a small rock and tossed it down the mountainside.

  “You’ll hit someone,” Jes said. “Papa says don’t.”

  “Tier’s usually right.”

  “Papa’s always right,” said Jes bitterly.

  Ah, thought Seraph. “Your father doesn’t disapprove of Hennea, Jes. He talked to me about several things he’d noticed about her—remember, he doesn’t know her as well as we do. One of the things was that he thought she was older than she admitted.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “That depends upon a number of things,” said Seraph.

  “Don’t tell me,” said Jes, kicking a clod of dirt onto Willon’s roof. “I’m too stupid. If it’s important, tell Lehr or Hennea or Rinnie. Or you could wait for the Guardian, he’s smart.”

  Hmm, she thought.

  “I thought your father was mistaken about Hennea’s age until I asked her about it just now. She didn’t answer me, Jes. She could have lied, but she didn’t want to.”

  “Why does it matter?” he asked again.

  “The problem is that I know of only three ways that Hennea could be older than she appears. At least, enough older that it attracted your father’s attention.” Seraph sat on the ground beside Jes, and after a hesitation, he sat down, too. “The first is impossible, because Hennea is no Healer. The second is equally unlikely. The Shadowed can be very old and still seem young. But Hennea touches you all the time. You’d know if she were the Shadowed. The third isn’t much better. Wizards—not Ravens—but solsenti wizards who are very powerful sometimes live longer than usual.”

  “Hinnum was centuries old when Colossae fell,” Jes said.

  “I’ve heard stories that say he was as much as three centuries old,” Seraph agreed. “But he was the greatest wizard of Colossae, the wizards’ city. Still, it is not uncommon for wizards to live to well over a hundred years.”

  “Hennea could be a wizard,” he said. “You told me Ravens have to be mageborn, just like Guardians have to be empaths.”

  “I don’t think she is,” she said. “If she were a wizard, she’d never have left Volis’s library the night we killed him. No matter how tired or anxious she was, a wizard wouldn’t have forgotten about another wizard’s library.”

  “You and she are using the mermori libraries to try and free the Order-bound gems,” he said.

  Seraph nodded. “But wizards are obsessed with books, Jes. Books are the only way they can do their magic. They have to know all about the nature of fire before they can light a candle. That makes books very important. Hennea knew about Volis’s library—she’d lived here. But it was only yesterday she realized that his library might be dangerous.”

  “She came here when she ran away from me,” he said. “I embarrassed her. I didn’t mean to.”

  That was it, she thought, the real reason he was upset. Hennea had been avoiding him all day. Seraph looked at her son and wished she knew how to make the pain of living easier on him.

  “That’s right.” She’d never found that lying about hurtful things made them hurt any less.

  “But I embarrassed her, anyway.”

  Seraph considered it. “If, say”—she glanced down at the roof below—“Willon told me I could touch him anytime I wanted, do you think I would run off in embarrassment?”

  Wide-eyed, Jes was obviously having trouble imagining Willon saying any such thing to her. He shook his head. “They’d be picking up Willon pieces for years.”

  She grinned. “Do you know what I think, Jes? I think if she hadn’t wanted to touch you, they might be picking up pieces of Jes all over the place. I think she wanted to touch you, and that’s what embarrassed her.”

  Jes gave a long sigh. “Maybe you
’re right,” he said. “But you aren’t always good at seeing why people do things. You’re just like me.”

  “Probably,” she conceded. She weighed the possible harm of telling him more. “But your father knows people. Do you want me to tell you the other thing he told me about Hennea?”

  He looked at her, his dark eyes sad.

  “He asked me why she was still with us. She came with us to Taela to fight the Path, but after the Path was gone, she still stayed with us.”

  “For me?” he whispered.

  “Jes, I want you to listen until I finish, will you do that?” Seraph said. “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “Your father told me she would not have stayed for you.”

  Jes surged to his feet and took a step away, and Seraph continued quickly. “He said she would have left as soon as she could because of you, and I told him she was staying to help me with the Ordered gems and because of the Shadowed.”

  “She’d have left because of me.”

  “Because she’s worried for you. Will you listen?” She kept her voice soft.

  “All right,” he said, not looking at her—looking away from people while he talked to them was a habit of his. But he was not looking rather more pointedly than usual.

  “You know there are very few Guardians who live as long as you have,” she said. “Of those who survive adolescence, most are women. As you said, the Eagle Order comes only to empaths, for whatever reason. Yet the Eagle, of all the Orders, is the most prone to violence—something that no empath can live with easily.”

  “Stupid,” said Jes, with understandable emphasis.

  Seraph shrugged. “The Elder Wizards created the Stalker, Jes. I don’t know of anything more stupid, do you? Maybe there is a good reason for the Guardian Order to be so difficult to bear, but I can see none.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “The Travelers have tried a lot of things to help the Eagle,” she continued. “When an Eagle is born, the child is adopted out to another clan. They believe strangers won’t have a strong emotional attachment to a child who is not of their blood.”

  “Sorry you didn’t have a clan to give me to,” said Jes hotly.