Raven's Shadow rd-1 Page 22

  She stopped and swallowed. “You and I have never seen eye to eye, Seraph—but you’d die to protect your children. I know that. So when he started saying dangerous things… things that would get the whole village riled up if they heard… Well, I told him he was a fool. That there was nothing evil about you, and he had no call to accuse you of being shadowed.”

  Seraph’s stomach clenched.

  Alinath turned her head away. “He hit me. He’s done that a couple of times in the past month. I’m not saying I’m the easiest person to live with, but… you know Bandor; he was never like that.”

  “Go on,” said Seraph.

  “This time, it was more than a casual slap. I didn’t know if he was going to stop. Ellevanal help me, I don’t think he did either. Then he muttered a bit more and said something about not needing my interference. He tied me up and left. Seraph, I don’t know what he’s gone to do.”

  “He started after the priest left? Volis, not Karadoc?” asked Seraph.

  Alinath nodded. “I don’t like that man. Did Bandor go out to the farm?”

  “Did he say that was what he was going to do?” asked Seraph.

  “He said that he was going to save Rinnie.”

  “We haven’t been there since early this afternoon,” said Seraph. “I left her with Gura, but Gura knows Bandor. I have to go find her. Will you be all right here?”

  Alinath nodded. “Find him before he hurts her,” she said.

  “Where would he take Rinnie,” said Lehr, “if he didn’t come back here?”

  “The priest,” said Seraph. “If he thought she was shadowed he’d take her to the priest. We’ll find them,” she told Alinath.

  “Be careful,” said Tier’s sister. “Be careful, Seraph. Bandor’s not the man you know.”

  Outside the bakery, Seraph frowned in indecision; go to the temple or all the way out to the farm?

  “Can you tell if Bandor and Rinnie came by here?” she asked Lehr.

  He shook his head. “Not even if it were full noon—there’s too much…” He stiffened and looked around.

  Seraph felt it, too, a cold chill fluttering down her spine and a lump in her throat that made it hard to swallow.

  “Jes,” she called. “Are you here?”

  “Listen,” said Lehr. “Someone’s riding a horse up the road.”

  She saw Skew first, his white spots clearly visible in the starlight as he leapfrogged up the steep corner, hooves slipping and sliding. As soon as he was on the more level part of the road he broke into a smooth trot and stopped in front of her.

  “The priest,” said Hennea tightly, sliding off the horse. “I was a fool. He sent me to get you to leave your daughter unprotected.”

  Seraph nodded. “I’ve come to that conclusion myself. Do you think they’d take her to the temple?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll leave Skew here,” said Seraph. “He’ll lose his footing on the cobbles in the steep parts. Lehr, can you find some place to secure him?”

  “There’ll be space by the woodshed,” he said and took the horse.

  Hennea stood a little crookedly, as if she were in pain. Seraph called a magelight and took a good look at Hennea’s burnt arm.

  “There are easier ways to break a geas,” she said dryly.

  “I was in a hurry,” replied Hennea, her lips curving in a pale smile. “And I was angry.”

  “That’s going to hurt,” observed Seraph.

  “It already does. I’m not going to be much help in any kind of fight; my concentration is gone. I can feed your magic, though.”

  “Good enough,” Seraph said.

  Lehr came back and Seraph turned and started up the road at a rapid walk. Jes and Lehr could probably run all the way to the temple, but she and Hennea would have to take it slower or they wouldn’t be any good when they got there. She knew that Jes was with them by the clenching of her stomach, but she only caught a glimpse of him now and again out of the corner of her eye.

  “Tell me about Volis,” said Seraph. “Whatever you think will be useful.”

  “He’s smarter than I thought he was, obviously. The other mages in the Secret Path respected his power—but he’s young by solsenti standards and complex spells frustrate him. Because of that, he tends to use the Raven ring more than his own magic unless he’s weaving an illusion.”

  They came to a steep bend in the road, and Hennea quit speaking until they were on flatter ground. “I told you that the wizards steal Orders and wear them. Usually as rings, but there are some stones set in earrings and necklaces. He told me that some of the rings are painful to use, and some of them don’t work all the time. Most of the wizards can only use one ring at a time, but Volis has two he uses. The first one bears the Order of the Raven. With it he usually has an Owl, though I’ve seen him with a Hunter’s ring a time or two as well. You’ll know which one he wears when you see him, just look.”

  “How well does he bear the Orders?”

  “About as you’d think,” she said. “He seems to believe the Raven Order is just like his magic, except that he doesn’t have to use rituals.”

  Seraph smiled in satisfaction. “Tell me, does he have a bad temper?”

  As they got closer to the temple, Lehr stopped and bent down as if to touch the ground, but he pulled his hand back before it touched.

  “What’s this, Mother?” he asked.

  “What?” Seraph stopped, too, but she didn’t see anything.

  “A taint,” said Jes. He must have been close to Hennea because she gave a nervous squeak.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It looks as if a foul substance was spilled over the ground,” said Lehr. “It smells bad, too.”

  “Shadowed,” said Hennea in a small voice. “I’d wondered.”

  “It comes from the temple,” said Jes. “It’s darker there.”

  “It’s really there?” asked Lehr. “Why can’t you see it, Mother?”

  “I don’t know why Ravens can’t see the Stalker’s influence, or why Larks can’t either,” replied Seraph. “I can understand why the ancients didn’t feel it necessary for Owls or Cormorants, but Larks and Ravens have to deal with shadowing.”

  “Unto each Order…” murmured Hennea.

  “ ‘Are the powers so given’—yes, yes, I know. It is still stupid. So Volis is most likely shadowed.” It was a very rare condition. Seraph had never dealt with someone who was shadowed, though her teacher had. He’d died before he taught her much about it because there was so much else to learn. She knew the Stalker needed some destructive feeling or act to gain influence and the amount of influence varied. The Shadowed had been different, her teacher said, because the Shadowed had invoked the Stalker’s power and welcomed the shadowing.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “We need to get to Rinnie.”

  They reached the temple finally, and Lehr tried the door.

  “It’s locked,” he said. “Barred from the inside, I think.”

  Seraph said something short and guttural, a summoning she would not have remembered if she’d stopped to think about it, and the door blew apart, reduced to splinters and bits of metal that covered the floor of the inner chamber.

  “Careful,” cautioned Hennea. “Anger and magic don’t mix well.”

  “Where will he take her?” Seraph knew that Hennea was right, but ever since the huntsman had come to tell her that Tier was dead she’d been more frightened than she’d been since the night her brother died—and fear, like grief, made her angry.

  “Follow me.”

  The temple was brightly lit with wall sconces, so Seraph had no trouble picking her way through the debris left by the door. But the room on the other side of the curtain was quite different than the one she remembered. It was a rectangular room with a low ceiling. There were no flying birds, no arched ceiling.

  “Is this the real room or is the chamber with the Orders the real room?” she asked Hennea.

  “Which do you think
?”

  This room was more in keeping with a building that had been put up in less than a season’s time. It was not too different from Willon’s store, and she couldn’t smell magic in it at all…but…

  “The other one is real,” she said with conviction.

  That room had been too detailed to have been an illusion set up just for her, but he couldn’t show that room to just anyone. This chamber looked just as the villagers would expect.

  Hennea nodded her head. “As I told you, he is a very good illusionist.”

  There was a small door set unobtrusively near the back wall and Hennea led them through it and down a narrow stairway.

  “We’re close now,” Hennea said. “We should be as quiet as we can.”

  “Rinnie’s been here,” whispered Lehr.

  “I can smell her fear,” agreed Jes, already at the bottom of the stairway.

  The stair ended in a short, dark hallway that smelled of earth and moisture to Seraph; but Lehr’s nose was wrinkled with disgust and he was careful not to bump against the wall. Light pooled by an open doorway.

  Seraph brushed by the others to enter the room first.

  Rinnie was there; like Alinath, she’d been tied and gagged, but Seraph didn’t see any bruises. Relief washed over Seraph; Rinnie wasn’t safe yet, but she was alive.

  Several hundred candles were set out to form five circles on the floor with Rinnie in the middle of the center circle. The others each contained a bit of jewelry with a single large stone in the setting.

  Volis was there, too, peering over a fragile-looking scroll laid out on a table almost too small for it. He didn’t look up as they entered. As Hennea had advised, Seraph looked at his hands and saw two rings. One of them should be Raven. Seraph focused her magic and looked at the rings. Raven and Owl, just as Hennea had predicted, but twisted somehow and empty. Wrong.

  In the far corner of the room, Bandor sat cross-legged on the floor, rocking back and forth and muttering to himself. Owl-sick, thought Seraph. Unbound by Traveler laws, Volis had forced Bandor to do something against his will, and Bandor was paying the price.

  She took another step forward and ran into a barrier of magic. With a quick flick of thought she made the barrier visible. It arched across the room, leaving Volis, Bandor, and Rinnie on one side of the barrier and the rest of them trapped on the other: trapped, because the barrier now covered the doorway and sealed them all in. At least she assumed they were all there. She hadn’t seen Jes in the quick glance she’d taken.

  “Volis,” Seraph said.

  Her voice trembled with fury; she’d thought she had herself under better control. She was so angry at him and at those unknown men who were like him and played havoc in their ignorance. They had stolen Tier, Rinnie, and Seraph’s peace; they would pay, all of them.

  Painfully, she drew the serenity of her training around her like a cloak; it was Volis who had to lose his temper. When she was certain she was calm, she said, “What are you doing?”

  “Summoning the Stalker,” he said, without looking up. “I’ve been expecting you—as you can see. Once my little Raven took flight I thought she’d bring you here. At first I was upset with her, but then I thought it would not be a bad thing to have an audience—as long as they didn’t become part of the ceremonies.”

  Guardians were all but immune to magic—Jes could go through the barrier. It was just possible he could get through, retrieve Rinnie, and return across the barrier with her. But if he couldn’t, he would never leave her. Trapped there, he would try to protect Rinnie from Volis—and that was unacceptably dangerous. She’d send him there only if there was no choice.

  She could tell that Jes had reached the end of his control because the temperature in the room was dropping rapidly.

  “You are an ignorant fool,” she said coldly. “The Eagle is not the Stalker. The Stalker is what made the Shadowed what he was. If you manage to summon it, you will not be more—you will be nothing. The Stalker has no followers, because anything that answers to it becomes a thing just as it is.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know about people like you,” said Volis. “My first teacher liked to tell me how ignorant I was because he was afraid of me and what I could do. So for years I did his bidding as his apprentice. When the Master of the Secret Path found me and told me the truth, the first thing I did was arrange for my teacher to receive a lesson ensuring that he never had a chance to mislead anyone again.” Satisfaction colored his voice. “Take warning from that. You say I am wrong, but you don’t know me, don’t know what I can do.”

  The growing cold made Seraph shiver, but she trusted that Jes would hold on a few minutes more. She needed to make this boy angry.

  “Oh, I know what you can do,” said Seraph serenely. “Do you think that Hennea spent the whole day silent? Or do you think that I should tremble before an illusionist?” She saw her tone made him flush. Solsenti wizards looked down upon illusionists, saw their magic as a lesser thing because it neither created nor destroyed. Solsenti wizards were fools about many things. “A boy barely old enough to dress himself? A solsenti conjurer who defiles himself with the dead because he has to steal their magic or everyone would know how ignorant he was?”

  “I may be an illusionist,” he said with careful dignity, “but I trapped you—both of you Ravens and your Hunter son, too. And this ignorant boy found out your secrets. I know how to summon a god.”

  “You can’t even keep a Raven with geas,” said Seraph. “How could you summon a god?”

  She’d hoped to anger him with the reminder of Hennea’s escape, but he was too excited about his discovery.

  “It will be easy,” said Volis. “The Cormorant was the key.”

  And then, pacing back and forth, he began to pontificate upon pseudo-complexities of the Orders that the wizards of his Secret Path had “discovered” over the years.

  “Lehr,” Seraph said softly underneath the flow of Volis’s words. “Is he shadowed?”

  “Yes. Uncle Bandor, too—though not as deeply.”

  Seraph nodded her understanding, then turned her attention back to the ranting Volis.

  “I took the rings, one for each Order. The Secret Path only has four Healer rings, but none of them work right. So they gave me this one to do as I wish. I have one for each of the Orders, but with your daughter I don’t need the Cormorant.”

  He looked at Seraph, his face flushed with triumph. “I tried it with just the rings, but it didn’t work because the spell calls for blood and death. Getting someone of each Order is impractical—but then I remembered something I read about sympathetic magic, using one thing to represent other things, like using a feather for air. I wrote to Telleridge and he said he thought it might work. So all I needed was one of you.”

  He looked at Hennea and said spitefully, “I could have used you, but I thought you liked me. I didn’t want to hurt you. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble, couldn’t I?”

  “You might have,” Hennea agreed mildly.

  He didn’t know what to say to that, so he turned his attention back to Seraph. “I thought that it would be easier to use the youngest one. It wasn’t hard to persuade Bandor that she was in danger and I could help her. You should be proud, Seraph; your daughter’s death will return the Eagle to the world.”

  Sweat dripped from his forehead, though on the other side of his barrier, Seraph’s breath fogged in the cold. Evidently the barrier blocked the effects of Jes’s ire.

  “Solsenti wizards,” said Seraph, slowly shaking her head, “always making things much more complicated than they really are. The Stalker is already here at your request.” She smiled at him. “You know I speak the truth.”

  His eyes widened for an instant as his stolen Owl ring, once she’d called his attention to it, told him she was right. Then he narrowed his eyes accusingly. “You just think you speak the truth, that’s all it means. You are wrong.”

  “I can’t give you proof of the Stalker,” agreed Se
raph mildly. “You’d have to be Hunter to see what you have done in your stupidity.” He didn’t like to hear the word stupid, especially as he knew that she meant it. But he wasn’t going to lose his temper enough for her purposes; he was too buoyed up by his plans. She’d have to bring Jes into it.

  “I can show you what Eagle is,” she said.

  The whole time they’d spent talking, Seraph had been sorting through the intricate work of the spell holding the barrier together. If he’d just used solsenti magic, she might not have been able to break it, but he’d woven Raven and solsenti magic together and the result was unstable.

  “Jes,” she said, “go get Rinnie and keep her safe. Lehr, when you can, take Bandor.”

  Volis frowned at her words. “Jes? Isn’t that the name of your idiot son? He’s not here.” He shivered once.

  “Yes,” said Seraph, “he is. You just aren’t looking. Jes, the priest wants to get a good look at you.”

  The Guardian was nothing if not dramatic, coalescing out of candle smoke into the oversized wolf he favored over other forms. He stood not two paces from Volis, frost shading his coat and moving from his paws to the hem of Volis’s robes. Jes growled, a low rumbling sound. Seraph’s pulse picked up until she could hear the sound of her heartbeat in her ears.

  Volis, who had no warning or understanding of what Jes was, cried out in terror. That fear did for Volis’s magic what anger had once done for Seraph’s. His control of Raven magic failed, and Seraph ripped the barrier into pieces with a sweep of power.

  “This is my eldest son, Jes,” she said. “Who is Eagle and Guardian—and in no need of your summons.”

  She kicked aside the carefully placed candles, breaking the circles and removing any temptation he might have had to kill Rinnie.

  As she walked she continued speaking, quoting from the book of Orders. “ ‘Thus is it said that when the Elder Wizards took upon themselves the need to fight the Shadow-Stalker, that they created them the Orders. Six Orders created they them, after the six who slept forever. First, Raven Mage, second, Cormorant Weather Witch to aid their travels, and third created was Healer who is Lark that they might survive to continue the fight. They rested and then made fourth, the Bard and Owl to ease their way among strangers, fifth, Falcon the Hunter to feed them at need, last created they Eagle who is Guardian for all to fear.’ The Guardian, Volis, is an Order like any other, though, as you can see, more difficult to detect.”