Raven's Strike (21 page)

“Let's find the Travelers and go home,” said Lehr, increasing his pace down the road. He didn't think they'd find the Clan of Rongier the Librarian alive, but he had to find them anyway. He owed Brewydd that much.

As they got farther into Colbern, the stench grew worse. There were barricades across some of the streets, futile stacks of household goods to keep plague victims away. They saw scavenger birds, rats, and once, a feral dog, but no people.

They found Rongier's clan in one of the small squares of land left open for grazing and forage of such animals as the townspeople kept. The Guardian knelt beside the first body and sniffed, without touching.

“They've been dead for a week, more or less. Like the horses.”

Lehr crouched by a woman who lay facedown, her pale hair reminding him too closely of his mother's. She, like the rest of Rongier's clan, hadn't died of plague. They'd been killed by the people they had been trying to help.

He touched her hair—as long as her face was downward, she was a stranger. “Someone thought they might carry the disease like the horses you found in the stable, and, I suppose, the cats, dogs, chickens, and goats we haven't seen.”

He turned her body over gently, as if she might be hurt if he were too rough. He'd seen her cooking beside his mother, and straightening the shirt on a toddler, but he didn't know her name.

He rose to his feet and walked by the bodies, putting names together for the death roll running in his head. “Here's Benroln,” he said.

Lehr could tell by the dead villagers who surrounded him—and by the way his body had been mutilated—that the clan leader had given good account of himself.

“Isfain,” said the Guardian in such an odd voice that Lehr looked up. Isfain, he remembered, was the one who had been set to watch Jes when he'd been held by the
foundrael.

“Are you all right?” Lehr asked.

The Guardian nodded. “I thought I wanted him dead,” he said, then walked on to the next body. “Kors.”

They were all dead, men, women, and—heartrendingly—children. The red-haired twins who had always been up to some mischief or other were laid out formally, their throats neatly cut. The toddler who had sucked her thumb whenever she caught his gaze was crumpled in a little broken ball.

There were townsmen among the dead here, too. A few armed with swords might be guardsmen, but most of them had been armed with cudgels or tools.
Desperate men do desperate things,
was one of Papa's sayings.

Lehr turned from the body of a dead man who held a sharp saddler's knife and almost stumbled over a woman's body.

Her ice-blue eyes had gone to the crows, but he recognized the sharply defined nose and wide mouth. Igraina, who had taken special delight in ordering him about and used the opportunity to flirt with him gently. Beside her was the clan smith, Lehr couldn't remember his name, but he remembered the man's shy smile.

By the time they were finished, the Guardian was leaving frost behind on the ground where he walked. Lehr couldn't tell if it was because he was angry or sad. There was no one left for the Guardian to defend or to seek vengeance upon. From the empty streets they'd seen coming through the city, the people who'd done this were most likely already dead.

The one person they didn't find was Brewydd. Lehr didn't find that a hopeful sign. Doubtless she'd been out trying to heal someone when the madness had taken the townspeople.

“There are too many for us to bury,” said Lehr helplessly. “But we can't leave them like this.”

The Guardian stared around them. “I remember . . . battlefields thick with bodies. Honorable soldiers who deserved better than to be carrion for the vultures. Come here, Lehr. Beside me where you'll be safe.”

Lehr got as close as he dared, until the cold of his brother's talents bit his fingers, and dread made it hard to breathe. Cornsilk flattened her ears in distress, but she stood beside Lehr. Apparently they were close enough because the Guardian began singing, a strange atonal sound more akin to a wolf's howl than to any song Lehr had ever heard.

It hurt Lehr's heart, and the tears he'd been fighting fell from his cheeks as if he were a child no older than Rinnie. He'd known these people—hauled firewood with them, fought beside them. And they were all dead. Had died trying to save this town, who had killed them.

The ground shook beneath his feet in answer to the Guardian's song.

Magic surged up through Lehr's feet in a sudden, almost-painful wave that left his ears tingling. All around him the earth broke open around the bodies of Travelers and townsfolk alike and swallowed them down, leaving only turned earth to mark where they had been.

The Guardian's song ended.

“What—” Lehr abandoned his question and set his shoulder beneath Jes's as his brother, pale and sweating, started to fall. Jes sobbed hoarsely as Lehr helped him to a crude bench beneath a small maple tree.

“Shh,” he said, kneeling in front of him, wishing he could do more. But Jes had pulled away from him as soon as he sat on the bench, and Lehr knew that no touch of his could comfort his brother. “They'll feel no more pain now, Jes. Nothing more can hurt them.”

Jes raised his dark eyes. “So much sorrow,” he gasped. “Brewydd, I think. Nearby.”

Lehr remembered then that Jes was an empath.

He stood up and looked around slowly. If Jes felt Brewydd hurting, it meant she was still alive. His eyes fell on a small covered cart that could be pulled by hand or horse—Brewydd's
karis.

He put Cornsilk's reins in Jes's hand. “Hold her for me,” he said. “She's probably unhappy, too, Jes.”

His brother leaned forward until his forehead rested against her front leg. The mare turned to lip the back of his shirt.

Deciding he'd left Jes cared for as best he could, Lehr made his way to the
karis
—mindful to avoid the places where the earth was soft.

When he opened the door, he was met by the smells of illness. Brewydd took up so little space he almost dismissed her as an odd lump in the bedding before she moved.

“You came, boy,” she said. “I worried you would come too late, but then I felt the earth welcome her children home by a Guardian's call. I knew you were here then.”

He gathered her into his arms and took her out into the sunshine, hoping its warmth would aid her. She looked as though she'd lost half her body weight since he'd seen her last.

“We should have come with you,” he said. “Rinnie was safe with Aunt Alinath. If we'd come with you, this wouldn't have happened.”

She reached up to touch his cheek, then patted it gently, and he realized she was blind.

“Who knows what would have happened? That is already written, boy, and not for you or me to change.”

“Brewydd?” Jes had left his bench. Lehr looked up and saw that whatever had been tearing at his brother was better now. “We'll take you home, and Mother will fuss over you like she does Papa.”

“No, boy,” she said gently. “I stayed to talk with you. One of my gifts was farseeing—a weak gift, but it told me I had to wait. Don't mourn me, Lehr—” She brushed away a tear with her thumb. “I'm an old, old woman. Too old to see this illness for what it was. I should have: I knew there was a new Shadowed.”

“What went wrong?” Lehr asked. He carried her over to the maple tree and its bench and sat, cradling her as if that might protect her somehow.

“I healed, and they were back the next day worse than before. It was shadow plague, boy. Deaths to feed the Shadowed's power. I knew what to look for, but I'd forgotten, old woman that I am. By the time I thought of it, I was sick myself and half the clan with me. Healed them, then healed myself, but it was too late. The healing took more than I had to give, so I'm dying anyway. Just as this town all died. Shadow-killed. I saw it.”

“Mother said Lark can't see shadow,” said Lehr, his voice gentle.

She shook her head. “Can. We all can a little, it's just hard for us who don't have Hunter eyes or Guardian instincts. Orders have more in common than not, for all that the Ravens like to pretend differently.”

“The Shadowed killed this city,” said Jes.

Brewydd nodded. “Those who weren't killed by knife or club. The Shadowed will be up to full strength now. Tell your mother to be careful of him.”

“It is a man?” asked Lehr.

She shook her head. “Don't know. Shouldn't assume anything. Could be anyone. You had questions for me to answer. Important enough for me to stay for them, I think.”

“Phoran's Memory isn't gone,” said Jes.

Lehr explained about the aborted assassination attempt that led Phoran to flee Taela.

“Papa thinks that the Memory won't leave until the Shadowed is destroyed.”

The old woman nodded again. “If the Memory didn't leave when the others died, that is probably so. But it'll get stronger, too, more like the man it once belonged to. It might be that even the Shadowed's death will not set it free—like the Ordered gems.” She swallowed. “Tell your mother that. The Memory is like the Ordered gems—but the Order is attached to Phoran rather than a gemstone. It might help her.”

She rested for a minute, her breathing slow and shallow. “What else?” she said, sounding impatient. “There were two things, I know there were.”

“Papa,” said Jes. “Lehr knows.”

Lehr said, “Mother thinks something the Path did is weakening the connection between Papa and his Order. She said to tell you she sees holes in it as if it were fabric. She was able to patch most of them.”

“She did? Tell me how?”

“She told me to tell you she persuaded one of the Lark gems, the tigereye, to help her. You'd know which ring it was.” He cleared his throat. “She said she used magic to make yarn and the Lark's Order became a needle wielded by her own Order and she darned the holes to close them. Does that make sense to you?”

Brewydd made an odd sound that frightened Lehr before he realized she was laughing. “Audacious child,” she said when she could. “She's lucky the Lark half-trapped in that gemstone didn't kill her while she held it.”

“She says the mending is temporary and won't last. She was hoping you could do better.”

“No, boy,” she said. Her hand fell from his face, and he felt bereft of it. “Not even if I were twenty again. The Orders are beyond my touch as they should have been beyond hers. No. What she needs was lost when Colossae fell.”

Lehr felt a chill go down his spine.

“Is it still there?”

Lehr jerked his head to stare up at the Guardian—but met his soft-eyed brother's gaze instead.

“In Colossae?” she asked. “I don't know.” She gasped for breath while Lehr rocked her in his arms. She was too light; it was almost as if he held a child.

Her breathing settled. “I've been dreaming of Colossae
while I waited for you. I've never dreamed of Colossae before. You were there. You and your black dog and a tower.”

“We found maps of Colossae,” said Lehr. “In the Path's temple in Redern.

“Yes, yes,” said the old woman smiling. “The dream was for you. That's why I had to stay for you. To tell you that you have to go to Colossae.” She paused and relaxed. “Yes. That was it. You may not find your answers there, but if you do not go—you will find nothing.” Power, raw and hot, slammed into Lehr's body where it touched the blankets wrapped around Brewydd, robbing him of breath as she said, her voice ringing through him as if he were a bell, “If you do not find Colossae, Tier will fade, and the Emperor's head will adorn his enemy's wall.”

Her body went limp in his arms, and the strange power slid away until it was gone.

“Brewydd?” Lehr whispered.

He was afraid she was dead, but she stirred at the sound of his voice.

“I'm still here, boy. Tell your mother. I've been thinking about those Ordered gems. A few days ago something occurred to me. I didn't think it was important, but if you go to Colossae, maybe it will help.”

She closed her eyes and breathed for a moment. When she opened them again her color was a little better. “Tradition has it that there is nothing about the Orders in the libraries of the
mermori,
and from the searching your mother, Hennea, and I have done over the years, I'd have to agree. Nothing. Yet when the Elder Wizards left Colossae after sacrificing its inhabitants, they were able to create the Orders.
Solsenti
magic—and the magic the Elder Wizards had was
solsenti
magic—requires great study and forms. Things to be written down. A great magic like the Orders, which have lasted for tens of centuries, would require, oh, so much work, my children. What else could the Elder Wizards have been working on?”

“The Stalker?” said Jes.

She nodded. “That might be, of course. But they knew how to create the Orders; they must have written something down. A Raven shouldn't need much. There was a library.”

“Rongier the Librarian,” said Jes.

She nodded. “Tell your mother this, too; if Tier loses his Order, it will destroy him. His body won't die, not if there's folk to care for it, but the Order will take Tier with it. Leaving nothing. Nothing. If that happens, you'd best take care of it, Hunter. Your father will be dead, his body should be as well.”

She closed her blind eyes again and patted Lehr's hand. “There now,” she said. “I've had my part in this. I can leave the problem of the Shadowed to those more fit.” Her breath caught as if it hurt her. “There's a bag in my
karis
. Give it to your mother, she'll know what it is and what to do with it.”

“Shh,” Lehr said. “Rest.”

Instead her left hand closed over his. “Jes,” she said, holding out her free hand. “Come here, and take my hand. Now listen you both.” But she didn't say anything, just sent her magic through him like a flame that warmed almost to the point of pain, but not quite. From Jes's startled expression she was doing the same to him.