He dropped it as though it burned him. He knew little enough of dream journeys and vision quests; they were the purview of Craft, not Art. His one previous encounter with such things, though it had saved his life, left him with little desire to get better acquainted. But everything he did know said that it was impossible to bring back a physical object from the dream world. Magic simply didn’t work that way. And yet here was the clay flute, mocking him from the cushion of the couch where he had dropped it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Raven took himself to bed and quickly fell back to sleep, only to be startled awake, on his feet before he even realized where he was or what had awoken him. In the nursery, Ransley was screaming.
He dashed down the hall to the nursery. The door stood open, and in the soft illumination from the light globe he saw Tony, back to the door, unruly hair even more mussed than usual. Tony turned at the sound of his approach, and Raven took in the details. The nanny wore a faded tie-dye T-shirt over multicolored striped sleep pants. He cradled the wailing Ransley to him, bouncing him gently.
“He’s not wet,” Tony said. “And he shouldn’t be hungry.”
Raven concentrated on slowing his breathing. His pulse pounded in his ear as though he were in the midst of a duel for his life. Babies cried in the night. It’s what babies did. Except. . .
“He usually sleeps through the night,” Tony said. “I hope the little guy isn’t coming down with something. It could be a nightmare. Babies get them, you know. Or so the specialists say, I’m not sure how they can tell. But I read up on baby sleep patterns, and a lot of other baby stuff, when you gave me this job.”
Raven smiled, pulse returning to normal. Of course Tony had done his research. Despite the nanny’s rather Bohemian exterior, he and Raven had more in common than most people would guess. Beyond even a past that they struggled to live down. Faced with an unfamiliar set of circumstances, their first instinct was to read up on the subject.
Ransley’s wails quieted to hiccupping sobs. He stirred restlessly in Tony’s arms, and caught sight of Raven. Instantly he held his arms out. “Da,” he cried. And then, more insistently, “Dad!”
It was the first time he managed dad instead of da. Despite the unsettling thought of something so small and defenseless as his son experiencing a nightmare, Raven still felt warmth bubbling up inside him. He was a dad, against all odds and counter to everything he’d thought he wanted only a few years ago.
He reached out “Here,” he said. “I’ll take him for a little bit.”
“Are you sure?” Tony said. “You can’t have gotten much sleep. I don’t mind.”
“I’m sure.”
Now that he was fully awake and certain of the safety of his son, the content of his dream returned to him in every detail. Only it wasn’t just a dream, not in the conventional sense, any more than what happened to him in the cave in Australia had been a dream for all that he had wanted to believe it so. He had known enough Craft practitioners to respect that their magic was as real as his own. And just as a Mundane or a Craft practitioner could be burnt by magefire, apparently an Art practitioner could be subject to the dreams and visions of Craft, even if they had not trained for it and had really no idea what to do with it.
No. He was lying to himself. Use this at the beginning of your path. It will call to you your guide and ally. He could pretend to believe that the path was metaphorical, but he knew with a deep unshakable knowing that it was not. Knew it, and knew what he had to do. But right now, he would sit a little longer with his son and hope that Cassandra came home soon.
In the end, Cassandra didn’t return home before he left. In the pale hours before true dawn, Sherlock messaged him on the crystal. Sherlock had returned back to headquarters; there were too many active situations for her to stay away. Cassandra and Rafe had remained at the logging road, grabbing some sleep in vehicles borrowed from the K-9 officers while the search went on. Waiting on the scene so they would be there if they were needed.
Raven felt it in his bones; he could wait no longer. He sat down in the library with a sheet of creamy white stationary and the fountain pen that he preferred for such things. Slowly, thoughtfully, he wrote out a letter to Cassandra. It wasn’t a long letter. The first paragraph explained where he was going and why. The rest of the letter contained nothing that she didn’t know already, and yet he wanted it said one last time. How he loved her and Ransley more than life itself. How he would always return to them if it was within his power to do so. That if he had not returned, it meant that he could not.
He folded the letter and placed it in the locked drawer with the Ravenscroft journal, where it would only be found if he did not return.
Raven faded back into existence at the spot on the trail where the sheriff’s deputy had taken him that first day in Devil’s Crossing, and where the sheriff had shot him. Gods, could that be just two days ago? Given the exponential growth of the darkness, he would not risk teleporting directly into the cave and possibly into a situation he wasn’t ready to handle.
The high desert was broad and empty as ever, a landscape that could swallow him whole and never even notice. He could only hope that he had correctly interpreted Grandmother’s instructions. He looked around as he slid his hand into his pocket, felt the cool smoothness of the clay flute. There was no one else in the area, and no wonder. The sky was oppressive, a horrid dark yellowish color that boded ill; he couldn’t imagine anyone deciding that this would be a good day for a hike. Raven had only seen a sky change like that once before. It had preceded the worst storm he’d ever seen, one that had come a hair’s breadth of becoming a tornado. He would almost welcome the lightning stabbing at the trees, the thunder that shook houses and the storm winds that made windows rattle, if only he did not have to face what lay before him in that cave. He could practically taste the darkness in the air, even from here, thick enough that even a Mundane must feel it on some level.
He took the flute out to his mouth and blew. He succeeded only in achieving a breathy sound like a child might make blowing through a drinking straw. Damn. He trained on the piano, not the flute, and certainly not a rudimentary instrument such as this one. He should have asked Grandmother for a lesson.
He refused to accept the end of the world rested on his lack of skill with wind instruments.
He tried again, and produced a soft, low almost-whistle. Again, and produced a mournful, warbling sound like the cry of a lonely bird calling for its lost flock. He waited. Nothing. The desert was still as death. Not even a wind stirring the long, sparse grasses.
He blew again, then slid the clay flute back into his pocket. Still nothing.
Maybe he needed to be closer to the cave. Maybe this was all useless. If it were not for the solid presence of the flute, he would think he was losing his mind. He walked a little further before blowing the flute one last time.
Silence.
Then he heard the rustling of wings behind him, the almost mocking craik-craik of a raven, as it settled on a boulder not far from where he stood. The bird looked up at him, cocking its head.
Oh gods, no. Not another enigmatic raven guide. He'd had enough of that in Australia. If the powers that be were going to send him a guide, could it not be—
“Hello.”
He turned at the soft voice behind him. The woman had not been there a moment before. There was no cover, no trees, no shelter from which she could have come. No ripple of magic that indicated a teleport. And yet there she was.
Raven looked the woman up and down, taking in hair streaked in silver and white, hanging in two long braids down her white deerskin dress. Her coppery red skin indicated Native American heritage, but her eyes when she turned to look at him were so pale a gray that they appeared nearly white. He would have wondered about her vision, except that her gaze clearly focused on him, taking his measure and seeming somewhat disappointed with what she saw.
“Well, you're not what I expected in a champion. But Grandmother w
ould not have given the flute to just anyone, so I guess you’ll have to do.”
Raven took a moment to summon every scrap of diplomacy he had; the stakes were more important than his pride. “You must be my guide, then,”
“Must I?” She sighed. “I suppose I am, for what it's worth. I am Winter Snowraven. You may call me Winter.”
It must be a translation of her real name. But then this whole conversation must be translated. Who or whatever she was, she was not from this time. Probably not from any tribe still extant.
“I am—”
“Another Raven,” she finished for him. “Yes, I know. Who else would come to mend the raven in the cave that protects us all?”
That hazy sense of unreality had increased. The colors, never very bright in this locale, had grown even more muted. Surreptitiously, he drove his thumbnail into his pointer finger to be certain that he could still feel his own body.
“Are we still in the real world?” He asked her.
She sighed impatiently. “Your kind. Always wanting to label things, always wanting to divide this thing from that thing.”
He wasn’t certain if your kind meant people of European descent or practitioners of Art. He suspected that in her eyes it was the same either way. Her enigmatic answer reminded him all too much of Bran Tarrant who had saved his life when he had been in hiding in Australia. Bran had been real, though. Or perhaps he should say that Bran had been flesh and blood, moving in the same time and space and more or less by the same physical laws as Raven himself.
“Grandmother told me to use the whistle to summon a guide. But a guide to what? I still don’t know what’s needed to stop this darkness.”
“I was the one who stopped it last time,” Winter said. “I and my wife, who wrought the petroglyphs. The warrior petroglyph at the cave entrance was a stopgap, a way of containing the darkness while we worked to bring the raven petroglyph into being, and later to protect people from coming too close to the raven. Though a creature of light, it is powerful enough to be dangerous in its own right. And of course, to protect the raven itself. We knew it had to stand for centuries upon centuries, long after anyone living remembered its purpose. We never imagined the time when men would create great metal beasts that could rumble upon the surface of the earth and destroy things deep within.”
“The vibration from the earthmoving equipment that caused the crack in the petroglyph. Is that what brought the darkness across?”
He thought about the odd sound that Morgan had heard, the one that shook the earth. Could that have been the darkness shoving the crack wider? Or maybe the darkness shoving its way into their dimension?
“Say rather that it allowed it to come across. The darkness is a thing with long memory. It remembers how well it fed the last time it was loose in this world. It sensed, I am sure, that the feeding would be even better this time.”
Because there are so many more people alive in the world today.
Without another word, she started up the trail to the cave. He fell in behind her. She had a surprisingly brisk stride for one of her short stature and apparent age.
“Wait,” he called after her. “I still don’t know why we are here, or what we are supposed to do to stop this thing.”
“I died in stopping it, though I had the whole power of my tribe behind me. Our magic was different in those days. Not Art or Craft, but the melding of the two. So much was lost when the Europeans came and massacred the people. But that is another evil, long after we drove away this darkness that has come again.
My wife survived the ritual to drive the darkness back to its own plane, but her part of it was done with the creation of the art that became the petroglyphs. I believe she married a man from the new tribe, and had many children. It’s hard to see things clearly, hard to keep track of the living from where I’ve been, but I think she was happy. I hope she was.” Winter smiled a little wistfully. “I’d like to think that somewhere her blood runs through the veins of someone who walks the earth today.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Raven froze on the trail. “One moment. If you died stopping the darkness the first time—.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to start going on about the divisions between the dead and the living,” Winter said.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Raven lied smoothly. “But I’m hoping you can answer some of my questions about the darkness since you have experience with it.”
“I will answer your questions if you keep moving. It took you long enough to get to this point. There is very little time now left to waste.”
“The first death that we had,” Raven said. “In our time, that is. It seems like the darkness itself may have killed the victim. We certainly haven’t been able to place anyone at the scene. The sheriff had one suspect, but I was never convinced. And from what we’ve seen, people who fall under the influence of the darkness don’t simply get over it on their own, which eliminates all our persons of interest.”
“In my time, too, it seemed like the darkness was more able to act on its own when it first came out, and more independent, as though it was boiling with pent-up energy. There were a few deaths that seemed to come directly from the darkness. Then as it moved out and disbursed, it seemed to work more through people, rather than on its own. Maybe it grew less able to act without an agent the longer that it moved through our world. Or maybe it was clever enough to think that the subtlety would allow it to spread further. Maybe it needed the power from the first direct death to move on and spread.”
“The pattern of the spread doesn’t make sense,” Raven said. “If it were just going from place to place there would be a lot of places in between here and Bend, or here and Portland, that would have also seen a sharp spike in violent crime. And yet outside of Devil’s Crossing, it seems mostly to be hitting the bigger cities.”
“In the time I walked on earth,” Winter began, “we did not have nearly the large groupings of people that your time has. But the darkness did seem to move to the places where the largest groups of people were congregated. It feeds on death, remember, and so life attracts it.”
They walked on a little further in silence while he contemplated her answer. “So what do we do to defeat it?” he asked. “If it’s simply a matter of repairing the crack, well, I’m happy to lend myself to the cause, but architectural magic has never been my strong point.”
“Now that the crack has let the darkness through, it will not be enough to merely mend the physical damage to the raven. The darkness itself must be conquered and pushed back to where it belongs.”
“How can we do that?”
“I cannot say for certain whether the darkness comes from the same plane as soul stealers. As you have no doubt guessed, they are similar, but not identical. The darkness definitely seems to be more autonomous, for one thing. And it has the ability to spread on its own, making it far more dangerous. Much like soul stealers, the darkness, once it has crossed, can only be countered with magic that is the opposite of its nature. In other words, healing magic. The petroglyphs are essential to keeping it out once it’s been driven back, but they are already in place. If we are able to push the darkness back where it came from, then we only need to repair the raven, not make it anew.”
Raven’s step faltered as he took in the implication of what she was saying. “My background in dark magic means I am poor at healing magic. If that’s what we need, there are other mages that might be better suited. Healers.” Two sprang to mind immediately, although he was loath to name them, loath to bring them in to a mission that might well end in their deaths. Cassandra. Ana. He would gladly give his own life if it meant that they were safe. But was he willing to lay down his life in a futile battle that he could not win?
“I’ve battled soul stealers successfully, yes,” he said. “But what we are facing seems far, far more powerful than any soul stealer.”
“Indeed. Fortunately, healing magic has always been my strongest calling. But in this f
orm, and without the power of the tribe to draw on, I need an alternate supply of raw magic. When I faced the darkness last time, my entire tribe gathered the night before in a ceremony that raised energy and fed it to me, so that what I went in the morning to confront the enemy, I did it with the tribe’s strength as well as my own. Only a ghost of that energy raised still remains.”
Only a ghost. Interesting choice of terms. Raven did not point this out.
“In the absence of my tribe,” Winter continued, “you will need to feed energy to me.”
“I’m no witch,” Raven said. “I’ve never worked with a coven. I have no experience in sharing power.”
“But you were a dark mage once,” Winter said. “If I am not mistaken, you have more than once taken power given to you by another mage. And you have let your power be wielded by another.”
Raven stopped walking altogether. He’d already noticed that she seemed to know more about him than she logically should, but this depth of knowledge startled him. Yes, he’d accepted power from Cassandra, once, and only with her consent. It technically fell within the realm of dark magic, taking another’s power to wield as his own, but the circumstances had justified it. And yes, when he served under William, he’d surrendered his will to William and allowed him to wield his power. Not that William really needed it. It had been a test of his loyalty and his willingness to submit; he knew and accepted that. But at the time, William had been his master. Raven had given over his life and his power to him in every other way, so in the moment it seemed like a logical step, something he was glad to do to prove his fealty.
But back then Raven had been young and naïve, for all that he had imagined himself to be worldly. He was less trusting now. He did not really know this—person? Ghost? Spirit? He couldn’t even say for sure what she was, and yet she was expecting him to make himself completely vulnerable to her.
Raven's Shade (Ravensblood Book 5) Page 18
