Raven's Strike (23 page)

Jes sat down next to Hennea, but rose almost immediately to pace behind Hennea's side of the table until Rinnie recruited him to help her make dinner. She gave him a few things to do, but when he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, she let him be.
Good girl,
thought Seraph.

Lehr had retreated to the loft, and not even the noise of all the people in the room below him seemed to disturb his slumber.

Phoran and his men argued quietly over the resemblance of a hill near Taela though nothing else on the map seemed to fit.

Hennea, who had spent much of the last week searching through these maps, was composed and silent, much like Seraph herself, but Jes hadn't been able to stay near her. Seraph wondered if the death of Benroln's clan made her angry, too.

Rinnie, who knew the Travelers only from stories, kept her eye on the boys while she cooked. She'd just gotten her brothers back and wasn't going to chance losing them again.

Seraph turned her attention to the map Tier had. After a while, with a few glances at the other maps, she picked out the slightly thicker lines that were the roads.

“Maybe if we used Willon's map,” said Tier. “It doesn't have the whole of the Empire, but it covers a good two-thirds. And it's mostly accurate as far as we've used it.”

“What if this city isn't in the Empire?” asked Rufort, the older of Phoran's two guards.

He was, perhaps, a year younger than Jes, and nearly as big as Toarsen's comrade Kissel. Like Kissel, he gave the impression of a life hard-lived, but Seraph could see why Tier liked him so much.

There was something solid about Rufort, as if he were a person who, once having given his word, would keep it at considerable cost to himself. This past week, he'd turned a willing hand to any of the farm chores Tier had give him.

“Tradition places Colossae in the Empire,” said Hennea, without looking up from her map. “Unfortunately, there's at least a six-century gap between the time when the Elder Wizards left the city and the founding of the Empire, so we can't count on that.”

The younger guard, Ielian, looked at the maps and shook his head. “What is this supposed to accomplish? Phoran came to you for
help
. Not to be dragged around the Empire on a seek-and-find game looking for a city that might never have existed. You don't even know that there is still a city—or ever was one for that matter. It is just a story on the tongues of a couple of women.” He didn't add the adjective
silly
to
women,
but it was in his voice.

His eye caught Seraph's, and he saw what she thought of his disparagement. Instead of backing down, he just got angrier. Since Seraph always did the same thing when she said something stupid, she had a certain amount of sympathy for him.

“I thought we were waiting for the healer—” He aimed his accusation at Seraph. “But now your son says she is dead. If we do find Colossae, I suppose you will want us all to go there. But how does that help us kill this Shadowed, who needs to die to free the Emperor from your
Traveler's
curse?”

He knew a little more about Phoran's problem than Phoran had thought—or maybe Phoran had explained it to Ielian and Rufort sometime this week.

“It's not a Traveler's curse,” Seraph told him in an almost-gentle voice. “I could demonstrate the difference for you if you'd like.”

“Behave, Seraph,” Tier said, and she was certain she was the only one who heard the amusement in his voice. He didn't think she was serious. Perhaps he was right.

“Ielian has reason for his worries.” Tier pushed his stool a little back from the table so he could see Seraph and Ielian at the same time—like a referee at one of the Harvest festival wrestling matches. “He doesn't know Brewydd or Traveler magic, and we haven't taken the time to
explain
them.”

Seraph tapped her foot, but Tier had a point. She just wasn't used to justifying herself—or being referred to as “silly” even if only by implication.

“Fine,” she said. “First, the city exists beyond the legends. I am Raven, Ielian, and one of the things I can do is touch an item and get a feel for its history.”

Behind Ielian, Phoran was watching her with vague eyes. She'd been learning that the expression really meant he was thinking very hard.

“When we found these maps—”

“
I
found the maps—” said Rinnie, who was efficiently chopping up greens.

“When Rinnie found the maps,” Seraph corrected herself, “I read them with my magic and found these maps are from the time of Colossae. Moreover, that around two centuries ago a wizard held the city map in his hands as he stood outside the gates of Colossae. That is not legend, or women's stories. My own magic told me this.”

“The city exists,” agreed Phoran, leaning his elbows on the table and bracing his chin on his folded hands.

“Maybe it's near here,” said Rinnie. “That could be the reason that the Path built its temple here.”

“Volis told me that it was because of Shadow's Fall,” Hennea said.

“He told me that, too,” Seraph agreed.

“Fine,” said Ielian, throwing up his hands. “The city exists. How is finding the city going to help the Emperor?”

Seraph wondered if he realized that Jes had unobtrusively moved until he was leaning against the wall just behind Ielian.

“I don't know. But if Brewydd, Lark of the Clan of Rongier the Librarian, tells me if we don't go to Colossae, Phoran will lose not only his throne, but his head as well—then I will go to Colossae. If something in Colossae can help us rid this world of the Shadowed, then I will go to Colossae.”

“On the word of this bird woman?”

“Lark,” said Seraph, biting off the ends of her words. “A healer who dedicated her life trying to save people in need. She died to save the people who killed her.”

Hennea's sharp “Control, Raven” and Tier's “Easy, love” came one atop the other, followed by a thump as the heavy slab table lifted a handspan off the floor, then slammed down hard enough to vibrate the floorboards.

Seraph took a deep breath and fought to calm herself.

Ielian's next question was considerably more respectful. “Finding the city is the easiest way to discover who this shadow-man is?”

“He's not a man, not anymore,” Hennea told him. “No wizard who drinks at the Stalker's well stays human for long.”

“Mother, did the wizard have to go to Colossae to become Shadowed?” said Jes suddenly, and Ielian jerked—answering Seraph's questions about whether or not he'd noticed her son creeping up behind him.

“I don't know.” Seraph was grateful to him for asking the question, though. This wasn't a subject likely to stretch her ability to control her temper. “I've learned a lot this summer from working with Hennea and Brewydd. They knew different things than I did—but some of the information we shared was contradictory. There are things we just don't know and others we disagreed on. A lot of Travelers believe that the Unnamed King was the Stalker of our oldest stories.”

“Only stupid Travelers,” murmured Hennea.

Seraph continued blandly, “I can tell you my grandfather was certain that the Unnamed King had never walked the stones of Colossae—something supposedly passed down Isolde's line,
on my grandfather's mother's side, all the way from Kerine, who fought at Red Ernave's side at Shadow's Fall.”

Ielian made a disbelieving sound.

“Ielian.” Phoran's command was quiet, but Ielian nodded and subsided.

Seraph shrugged. “It doesn't matter what you believe, Ielian. Phoran came to us for help, and we'll do whatever we can for him. I believe finding Colossae is the best thing that we can do, both for Phoran and for my husband. I believe it because that's what an old, dying woman told my son.” She looked at Phoran and softened. Ielian was doing his duty and trying to protect Phoran. She was glad that his men were that loyal.

“What I can tell you, Ielian,” she said, “is that we will do our best to find the Shadowed and kill him or die trying.”

Something, maybe the truth in her last statement, at last satisfied Ielian.

“All right,” he said. “All right.”

“Is Willon's map still in the packs you boys took?” Tier asked Jes, breaking the small silence.

Jes bestirred himself and went to his still-full pack and unearthed the map, set it on the table, and retreated to a wall nearer Rinnie than the people crowded around the table.

“Can't you go sleep, Jes?” Rinnie asked, not for the first time. “I can make dinner by myself.” She tactfully refrained from pointing out that he was getting in her way more than he was helping.

“Go use our bed, son,” said Tier, an invitation that held the force of an order. “There's room next to Lehr. If you can't sleep, you can at least lie down for a while.”

Jes stiffened. “There are too many people here. I can't sleep with everyone awake.”

That was probably true as well; Seraph looked thoughtfully at her son. “Would it be easier outside?” she asked. “Or does the sun bother you?”

Jes shook his head. She could tell he was feeling bad because his gaze carefully avoided touching anyone in the room.

“He's too tired,” Hennea said suddenly. “If he goes to sleep, he'll sleep too deeply. He can't protect himself in the forest, and the Guardian won't allow him to try.” She pushed
aside the map she'd been looking at and continued briskly. “But he'll allow me to stand guard.”

“Yes,” said Jes, very softly.

“Get a blanket or two then, Jes.” Hennea stood up and cast a sharp look at Tier, then Seraph—perhaps waiting for them to object.

Seraph thought a walk in the woods might do Hennea as much good as it had earlier done for Seraph. She'd noticed that the collected expression on Hennea's face was beginning to fail her. She needed someplace private to grieve for Benroln's clan—and Jes needed rest.

“I'm not doing any good here,” Hennea told Seraph, almost angrily. “Whoever drew these maps knew less about mapmaking than I do. They don't even agree with each other.”

“We'll keep working on it while you're gone,” said Seraph steadily. In the Traveler tongue, she added. “I entrust my son to your keeping, Raven.”

A wild spectrum of emotion flashed over Hennea's face. “You trust too much,” she said in the same tongue.

“I don't think so.”

Tier opened the door for them. “Jes?”

Their son turned, so obviously operating on the last of his reserves of strength that Seraph had to fight the need to go to him. Her touch would only hurt him, though, so she stayed where she was.

“Thank you for going with Lehr to Colbern, son,” Tier said. “If you had not been there, he would have died.”

Jes clutched his blankets a little tighter and nodded.

Hennea let Jes choose his own path, and walked far enough behind him there was no chance of accidentally touching him. He was too tired to deal with her lack of control.

Time was such an odd thing. One moment you could talk to someone, then, suddenly, they were gone. Somehow it always seemed to her that there ought to be a way to turn back time and change the events. An hour, a minute, they were so simple in passing . . . reversing them should not be impossible. But she'd never found a way to do it.

Another clan was dead. More people that she had known and would never see again. She felt . . . empty.

Jes was silent as he walked. With his shambling gait, he should have been stumbling all over, but somehow his foot always seemed to land on the other side of fallen debris, rocks, or holes.

Hennea kept quiet as well. She didn't know if she could have spoken to him if she'd tried.

She understood what Seraph had just done, though she rather suspected neither Jes nor Tier knew Seraph had chosen the last words of a Traveler marriage ceremony. The ceremony where parents turned the care of their son to his spouse.

Hennea didn't want to think about it, or about death, or the Shadowed.

She tilted her face into the sun and let her mind go blank, as if there were nothing more than this moment: the sun in her face, the smell of trees and grasses, the sound of birds and insects, and the sense that told her where Jes was that had nothing more to do with magic than the power of the ties between a woman and her man.

He stopped on a gentle slope covered in yellowing grasses that looked no different to her eyes than several other places he'd passed without a pause. He shook one blanket out, handed her the other, then lay down on his face, leaving his back to absorb the late-afternoon, summer sun.

Rather than shaking her blanket out, she folded it and set it on an unoccupied corner of his. Sitting on its soft folds, she pulled her legs up to her chest and settled her chin on her knees, prepared to watch over him while he slept.

“I remember when Papa used to have nightmares almost every night.”

Jes's voice was so soft it could almost have been the breeze that rustled the leaves on the trees.

Hennea didn't say anything.

“He still has them, from his time as a soldier, I think. Though maybe some of them now are from being a prisoner of the Path.”

“I'll watch over your dreams.” Hennea almost touched his shoulder, which was so close she could feel the warmth of his body. “I'll wake you before they get too bad.”

“Thank you,” he said, and slept.

Sitting in the sun, trying to think of nothing, Hennea instead thought about what Seraph had said about all the strange coincidences that had shaped her family's life.

It had angered Seraph, the thought of someone meddling in her life, someone she had no control over. But Hennea found it to be a curiously uplifting thought. If there was such evil in the world, was it possible that there was good, too?

The gods are dead,
she reminded herself fiercely. But she couldn't, quite, kill the hope that Seraph had given her.