Raven's Strike (37 page)

For the first time, the library struck Phoran as welcoming, the gentle glow of magicked lights tucked unobtrusively behind bits of carving in the ceiling and walls providing a sense of protection from the dark.

Seraph didn't hear the door open or shut over the babble of voices, but she saw Jes stiffen and look toward the stairs.

“Lehr, Phoran, and Gura,” he said. “They smell of fear and blood.”

His voice was loud enough that Hinnum and Hennea stopped the calm-voiced argument—an argument so heavy with unspoken guilt and anger that Jes had been forced to leave Hennea's side and stand alone away from the rest of them.

Phoran topped the stairs holding his left arm as though it hurt. Lehr stood just behind him with Gura. The dog's hackles were raised, and it kept looking behind them.

“It's night,” Phoran said. “There are dead walking the streets. And I am hoping that's not as bad as I think it might be.”

“Magic has no hold on the dead,” said Hennea, speaking quickly, though there was no panic in her voice. “Hinnum, can they get in here?”

“They haven't bothered me before,” said Hinnum. “But you, they will follow. The door might hold them for a while, but not after they've smelled blood. Magic can work on them
a bit, no matter what the stories say, Hennea. Seraph, you will know what I mean when I tell you they are creatures of spirit.”

She did. Difficult to work, but if the Shadowed managed to cloak his magic in spirit, then something could be done. As long as there weren't many of them.

“Of course,” said Hennea, sounding rattled. “I'm sorry. I had forgotten. Like at the Mountain of Names. It's hard to remember everything. Jes, come back away from the stairway.”

“I have safeguards that can keep them out of the library,” Hinnum said. “But I haven't used them since your Willon left, and I cannot raise them as I am. I have no need of the safeguards myself; the dead are after flesh and blood, and, in my present form, I have none to tempt them.”

“What happens if they find us?” asked Ielian. He'd gotten to his feet and loosened his sword. Steel worked against some creatures of a magical nature, but it wouldn't help against the dead.

“It's not a good thing for the dead to touch the living,” Seraph said, giving them the extent of her knowledge. Her old teacher had been more worried about mistwights, water demons, and the like.

“There are a few ghosts in Colossae,” said Hinnum. “But they are largely harmless and stay near their homes. I don't have a name for these—necromancy was never an art I was drawn to.”

“I don't remember much about the dead,” said Hennea.

“They killed all the wizards who chose to stay here with me after the city died,” said Hinnum. “Running doesn't work; neither does most magic. It took me long time to learn how I might shield my apprentices, and it will take me too long to try to teach it to you. We have minutes before the doors give way, not days.”

“The Memory said they will demand a payment for our lives,” offered Phoran. “For whatever good that does us.”

“Seraph,” said Tier, his deliberately calm voice cutting through the rising tension in the library. “I left my lute in my packs at camp. Is there any way you or Hennea could fetch it for me?”

Seraph stared at him. Under the circumstances, it seemed like an odd request. Maybe she had misheard him. “What?”

He put his arm around her shoulders and smiled down at her, the tiredness in his eyes lifting a little. “There are a lot of songs about the dead, Seraph, and more stories. Phoran says the Memory told him that they are coming for a gift. The only gift I've ever heard any of the dead accepting is music.”

“I've heard that,” said Toarsen quietly. “My nurse used to tell us a story of a bard who tried to survive a night in a haunted castle by singing to the spirits until daybreak.” He hesitated, then said, “He stopped a moment too soon because he was distracted by the song of a nightingale.”

“I know that tale, but, fortunate souls that you are, there are no birds in Colossae to distract me,” said Tier. “So fetch me my lute, love.”

“They come,” said a strange, toneless voice.

Standing in the middle of the library was a creature of blackness. Too tall and thin for a human, it was shrouded in mists of night-colored darkness that moved as if some unfelt wind blew them here and there. It looked out of place, as if it belonged along the edges of the room where shadows gathered rather than out standing in plain view.

Phoran stepped forward, between it and the rest of the room, and she realized it was Phoran's Memory. It looked more substantial than it had last night, as if it were closer to being a living creature than a dead one.

Just then there was a hollow boom, which echoed in the room and made Jes growl.

“Seraph,” said Tier. “I think I'd better have that lute as soon as you can.”

Seraph opened her mouth and shut it. Tier knew the state his Order was in. He knew that the convulsion fits happened more often when he sang. He didn't need her to tell him again.

She bent her head and closed her eyes.

She'd never done this before she stole the gem, and she wasn't certain how to find Tier's lute without a cord of magic, however fell, to show her the way. But it had been a day of new things, and she took her magic and told it what she wanted.

Tier's lute was almost as much a part of him as his brown eyes and his dimples. It was easier than she expected to find it and call it because it wanted to be with him. She suspected
Tier might have been able to call it himself. She opened her eyes and saw it had placed itself on the polished floor at Tier's feet.

Tier bent down to pick it up. He grimaced, then rose more slowly than he'd bent down. Another thud came from the outside door.

“I'm getting too old for this much adventure,” Tier said. “Thank you for the lute, my love.” He looked around. “Let's get everyone gathered together here.”

He took a seat on the table, and made himself comfortable.

“Sit down,” he told them. “I want them looking at me, not at you. And that means you as well,” he told the Memory.

To Seraph's surprise, it collapsed to the floor. When Tier said something in that tone of voice, apparently even things like the Memory listened. Seraph sat on a bench next to Tier's table as he tuned the lute.

Phoran sat down on the floor, and his guardsmen spread around him. Jes and Hennea sat on the far side of the group, and Lehr took up the other, even though it left him nearest the Memory until Hinnum settled in between them.

“Rinnie, why don't you come here next to me,” offered Phoran. “I think your mother might have her hands full before this night is over.” So the most vulnerable of Seraph's children was seated in the middle, and Phoran took a good hold on Gura's collar without Seraph having to ask him.

Tier was still tuning the lute when the door failed, with the shriek of nails tearing free and a crack Seraph assumed was the wood of the door frame breaking. They all looked at the stairs, but there was nothing to see, no sound except for Tier's fingers on strings.

A wave of terror washed over her, worse by far than anything Jes had ever caused.

Tier played a quick scale and began tuning again. “I left it sit too long,” he muttered. “The strings don't want to stay in tune.”

“Papa,” said Lehr, staring at the stairs. “Play.”

A mottled grey hand appeared over the top of the stair, and it pulled its body behind it.

“Run!” Ielian came to his feet, but Rufort and Kissel each caught him by an arm and pulled him back down again.

The thing emerging from the stairway looked more human than the Memory, thought Seraph, and oddly the more horrible for its increased resemblance. It had a pair of eyes and what must once have been a nose. A few strands of grey hair stuck out from the top of its head. It looked at them and snap-snapped its jaws.

“Sit,” hissed Toarsen at Ielian, who fought to get up again. “Running won't help.”

“No,” agreed the Memory, his voice like dry leaves in the wind. “Death walks the streets of Colossae by night.”

“Thanks,” snapped Phoran to the Memory, as Ielian made another abortive attempt to run. “That helped. Why don't you be quiet, eh? Ielian, sit still. Gura,
down
.”

Gura and Ielian dropped to the floor with equal unwillingness. Rinnie curled up and buried her face against Gura's side, and Phoran reached over awkwardly to pat her on the back with the hand that wasn't holding on to the dog's collar.

“Mother, the Guardian wants to come out,” said Jes. “But I think everyone is frightened enough.”

“Let him come,” said Seraph, the dryness of her mouth making her voice crack. “He can hardly make this worse.”

Someone, it might have been Ielian, squeaked, as Jes flowed into the shape of a black wolf just a hair smaller than Gura. The Guardian glanced once at Ielian and bared his fangs before looking at the thing on the stairs. His low growl was a continuous rumble that echoed oddly off the high ceiling.

Rufort jerked and slid backward a handspan before he stopped himself.

“Something touched me,” he said softly.

“Tier, isn't that damned thing in tune yet?” asked Phoran just as the creature pulled its flaccid legs over the stairway and began dragging itself forward.

The pressure of the presence of the dead crowded upon Seraph, bowing her shoulders under the weight. There were more of them than the creature they could see and the one that touched Rufort. She could feel them all around her.

“Tier,” said Phoran, as the thing closed the too-little distance between the stairway and their huddled group.

Jes stalked around until he stood between it and them. As he growled louder, the stench of rotting meat filled the library.

Tier grinned fiercely, and his fingers moved on the lute strings.

The thing mewled at the first note, fading from sight just as the foul odor lessened. But Seraph could feel them waiting.

Tier played a mournful song first, a song about a girl wed to a sailor who left on a ship and never came back alive. It was melodic and slow, and Tier's fingers never faltered. Nor did his voice.

Toarsen sucked in his breath once, but when Seraph glanced quickly at him, she couldn't see anything wrong. He hunched over and bowed his head, but he didn't look like he was ready to run.

The immediate crisis seemed to have been put on hold by Tier's music. Seraph worked the spell that allowed her to see spirit again—and the library lit like a field of bonfires in winter. The dead were there, a ring of shapes made of spirit and something else she could see but not define, a haze of red alternating with gold. She managed to pull her eyes away from them long enough to make certain Tier's Order was behaving itself, then returned to her watch, making certain that the dead stayed away from them.

When Tier was finished with that song, he glanced around at his audience—the one he could see. Then he began a soldier's marching song Seraph had never heard before. It had a catchy chorus, and as he started into it for the second time, Tier said, “Join in if you'd like.”

Lehr and Jes both did, and Rinnie sang a soprano harmony. Seraph found herself humming along. At the top of the fourth verse, Tier said her name, instead of the word that should have been there, and she realized that he was fighting.

“Seraph,” said Tier again.

She pulled her gaze away from the dead and saw his Order had pulled almost entirely away from him, held only by a few lonely strands of his spirit and the last threads of her magic. She grasped the cord that ran between Tier and the gem and pulled hard toward Tier.

“Better,” said Tier, before throwing his voice into the chorus again.

She held on. She might be able to help Tier better if she knew how spirit and Order interacted on a healthy Order Bearer.
She'd been too busy watching the dead before Tier called her to pay much attention to anyone else.

She looked up, intending to study Lehr—but her gaze stuck on the Memory first. She could see the Memory's form, but with her
seeing
spell its form was deep purple rather than black. Crouched beneath the shelter of Order was a sharp-featured Traveler who gleamed a soft spirit-blue. He met her eyes, looked startled, then whispered in her head, “Have him tell
The Fall of the Shadowed
as he told it for me.”

“Tier,” she whispered so she didn't interfere with his song. “The Memory told me to have you tell
The Fall of the Shadowed
the way you told it for him.”

Tier looked a little surprised, but he nodded. As he sang, she noticed Tier's spirit had steadied and grown more solid where it attached to the tattered grey-green bits of his Order. Seraph wondered if, once the Shadowed's spell was restrained, Tier's music helped fight the drag of the spell.

Tier finished the song, then, striking a minor chord, began an ascending scale that built to a haunting arpeggio, the music forlorn and plaintive. His clever fingers flew over the gut frets of the lute, and the notes fell into a less disturbing tone as he began the story of Shadow's Fall.

“It happened like this.”

Seraph had heard the story dozens of times before, so she paid little heed to the words. She surveyed the dead, but they seemed to be content with the lute-accompanied story, because they stayed where they were. The upper courses of Tier's lute wove bits of heroic ballads and festival songs into a single melody over a subtle throbbing bass that gradually began to take on the rhythm of a heartbeat.

“This young man was a good king, which is to say that he promoted order and prosperity among his nobles and usually kept the rest from starvation.” Tier's voice blended into his music.

When she was certain the dead were satisfied with Tier's storytelling, she resumed her interrupted task of looking at Lehr to see how the Order was supposed to look in relation to spirit.