Thick dark hair had been reduced to a few strands of white on his scalp. He looked as though something had sucked all the moisture from his body. His skin was color of oiled wood and had the texture of parfleche. His lips had shrunk with the rest of him, leaving his teeth exposed. He looked like a corpse left to dry in the sun, but Jes knew he was very much alive.
The Guardian released his grip before the Shadowed’s terror had a chance to damage Jes.
“I cannot kill him,” said the Memory. “That task is yours, Guardian.”
“I’ll do it,” said Lehr.
The Guardian smiled at his brother, then met Hennea’s gaze briefly.
“No,” he said. “Death is my gift.” And he snapped the brittle neck.
Jes screamed, ripped from the safe cocoon the Guardian had tried to envelope him in. The pain was far beyond anything he had ever undergone, but that wasn’t the worst of it.
Something reached up from Willon at the moment of his death and grasped onto Jes, wrapping itself around him. When it touched him, it felt as if someone had torn away his skin and pressed him into the man Willon had been. No man should ever know another as Jes knew Willon at that moment. He couldn’t hide, couldn’t distinguish himself from the Shadowed.
Cold hands touched his face and he felt Willon draw away, as if Willon’s ghost had no wish to come in contact with those hands.
“His death belongs to me,” said the Memory. “Give it to me.”
“Yes,” agreed the Guardian and gave way to Jes.
Cold lips touched Jes’s and he opened his mouth even as he struggled against the Memory’s hold—not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t help himself. He had no words for the sensations he felt then as Willon was drawn from him like a sword from its sheath.
Only when he was empty, did the Memory release him. Jes stared at it, unable to look away. The Memory had become a darkness so solid, Jes could hardly bear to look upon it. Rain glistened on it like wet ink.
“I am avenged,” it said, and it was gone.
Papa quit singing midword. He walked over and put a hand on Jes’s shoulder. Raw as he was, even such a light contact hurt, but Jes needed the reassurance more than he needed freedom from pain, so he leaned against his father for a moment.
When he pulled away, Hennea was there, slipping a hand through the crock of his arm and resting her cheek against his shoulder. The cool grace of her presence washed over him, soothing the raw places Willon’s death had left. He sighed with relief.
Mother came and gave him a sharp once over. “You’ll do,” she said.
He smiled tiredly at her, or maybe it was the Guardian who smiled.
“And so,” Papa said, his voice hoarse and his face unreadable. “And just so died the Shadowed who was once Willon, merchant of Redern.”
Mother took Papa’s hand and brought it to her lips. “Well done, my love.”
CHAPTER 21
They brought their dead out of the city.
While Hennea and Seraph set about making a meal, Tier got a camp shovel and began digging. Lehr joined him a few minutes later with another shovel.
“Who are we burying?”
“Willon,” Tier answered.
“We won’t have to bury him too deeply,” Lehr said. “There’s nothing left that would attract carrion feeders.”
“There’s all sorts of carrion feeders,” said Phoran, coming over in time to hear Lehr’s last remark. “I think six feet might be deep enough. I’ll spell you when you get tired.”
When Jes wandered over, his eyes soft and happy, they had dug down about halfway and had to leave the digging to one man at a time because there was no room in the grave for two. Jes crouched so his head was level with Tier’s.
“Are we going to bury Rufort and Hinnum?” he asked.
Tier sighed at the thought of digging another grave through the hard soil. “Let’s wait and ask what their customs were. Hennea will know what to do with Hinnum. Phoran, do you know what Rufort’s people do?”
“No.” Phoran shook his head. “But Kissel will. He’s sleeping now, but I’ll ask him when he awakes.”
“Kissel’s up,” Jes said. “I can hear him complaining about his shoulder. It itches, and he can’t reach it under the bandages. Toarsen—”
“—is coming over to help,” said Toarsen. “Hop out of there, old man, and let me take a turn. I didn’t get to kill him, but I’ll have my part in the burial. I don’t want him crawling back out of his grave.”
Tier knew better. He did. But when the rest of them turned to make sure that Willon’s body had not moved, he did, too.
Swearing, Tier jumped out of the hole and handed his shovel to Toarsen. “Dig,” he said. “And take it as punishment for that thought.”
They buried Willon deep in the earth. Hennea muttered something over the grave as they filled it. She didn’t use the usual words of an eulogy; it was more of a good-riddance-and-stay-in-your-grave-forever which she enforced with magic that Tier could feel envelop the grave.
No one wanted to sleep before their dead were tended, and there wasn’t much time before dark to collect a lot of firewood. So Hinnum and Rufort burned on a pyre owing more to the power of the Ravens than to the sparse pile of wood while Phoran, Toarsen, and Kissel told what they knew of Rufort’s life. When they were through, Hennea got up and spoke of Hinnum, the last wizard of Colossae.
Seraph and Hennea spent most of the next day freeing the Orders from the gems, but they stopped before dinner.
“It’s going to take a long time,” Seraph told Tier, as she ate Jes and Lehr’s rabbit stew. “We worked all day, and I think we freed four of them.” The first one, the Lark’s tigereye, Tier had watched.
“That’s all right, Mother,” said Jes, looking up from feeding Gura. They’d all taken turns babying the limping dog, but Kissel wouldn’t let anyone but Rinnie baby him. Tier had derived considerable amusement watching Kissel’s bewildered looks as Rinnie made him lie down while she tucked his blankets against him.
“There’s no hurry,” Jes continued. “Hennea is staying with us.”
We could spend this fall building Jes and Hennea a cabin, Tier thought. Jes would like something farther in the woods, if the forest king wouldn’t mind. But he looked at his wife and didn’t say anything. She was all Traveler now, her hair in braids and her skirts traded for Traveler garb.
She had given up her people’s ways for twenty years, and he supposed that he could give up his farm for the next twenty or thirty.
“You have to come visit me,” said Phoran, eating as though the rough stew was a gourmet dish from the palace’s kitchen. “Give me five or six years to tame the Septs a little, then I want Lehr to map the palace for me. I don’t want any more secret societies lurking in passages that no one remembers.”
“We’ll do that,” said Seraph. “But you come to us, too.” She nodded at Toarsen. “That one has ties in Redern. When Avar comes to visit his lands, come with him.” It wasn’t a suggestion, Tier noticed, watching Phoran’s lips curl up. Rinnie wasn’t the only one who’d grown comfortable commanding the Emperor.
“I’ll have you help me weed,” said Rinnie.
Phoran laughed. “I’ll do that. Toarsen, Kissel, and I will ride back to Redern with you and see you safely home. Then I think we’ll ride to Gerant and return to the palace with the Emperor’s Own at my back.”
“There will be more Ielians,” Tier warned him.
“I know.” Phoran’s smile dimmed. “But as long as there are more like Kissel, Toarsen, and Rufort, who have been a priceless aid to me, I can take the bad with the good.” He nodded at Tier. “You could come help me sift them out,” he said. “I’d see to it that you would be well paid.”
“No,” Tier said. “I’m not a soldier anymore, I’m a farmer.” He hesitated and glanced at Seraph. “Or I’ll be out on the roads with my Traveler wife.” He meant to sound casual, but his wife knew him too well.
She stiffened and put
down her stew. “Is that what has been bothering you?” she said hotly. “You’ll do no such thing. I tell you, I’m through paying for the sins of people long dead”—she glanced at Hennea—“or mostly long dead. I have no intention of being homeless ever again. If you want to wander around, you go right ahead. I’ll keep a candle in the window so you can find your way back when you’ve had enough of nonsense.”
Tier heard the truth in her words, lifting the weight of the world off his shoulders and smiled. “I guess, Phoran,” he said, “we’ll see you in Redern.”
That night, in Hennea’s temple, a Bard sang of heroic deeds, of lost loves, and mourning for the dead. Sometimes he sang alone, sometimes with his children, who were not Bards, but were children of Redern with voices that were true and pure. When the sun rose the dead departed.
They lingered a while, exploring the city, but before the first hint of autumn was in the air, they left the old city and closed its gates, trusting that it would guard its secrets for another age or so.
Tieragan of Redern took his family home.
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Raven's Strike rd-2 Page 42
