“I agree,” said a mild voice from the kitchen. “Enough badgering, Alinath.” Bandor entered from the baking room door with a large bowl of risen dough. “If any of Seraph’s children want to apprentice we’d be glad to have them here—but that’s for their parents to decide. Not you or the Elders.” He nodded a greeting toward Seraph.
“Bandor,” managed Seraph through her rage-tightened throat. “It’s good to see you.”
“You’ll have to excuse Alinath,” he said. “She’s been as worried about Tier as you are. I’ve told her that it’s not fair to expect a man trapping in the wild to come home on time every year. But he’s her brother, and she frets. Tier’s only a few weeks late. He’ll show up.”
“Yes,” Seraph agreed. “I’d best be going.”
“Didn’t I hear you say you had some honey?” he asked.
“Jes found some in the woods last week. I brought a few dozen jars with me,” she answered. “But Alinath didn’t seem interested in it.”
“Hummph,” said Bandor, with a glance at his wife. “We’ll take twelve jars for half-copper a jar. Then you go to Willon up on the heights, and tell him we’re paying a copper each for anything you don’t sell to him. He’ll buy up your stock for that so he can compete. Yours is the first honey this spring.”
Without a word, Seraph took out her pack and pulled out twelve jars, setting them on the counter. Just as silently, Alinath counted out six coppers and set it beside the jars. When Seraph reached out to take the money, the other woman’s hand clamped on her wrist.
“If my brother had married Kirah”—Alinath said in a low voice that was no less violent for its lack of sound—“he’d have had no need to go to the mountains in the winter in order to feed his children.”
Seraph’s chin jerked up and she twisted her wrist, freeing it. “It has been near to two decades since Tier and I married. Find something else to fret about.”
“I agree,” said Bandor mildly, but there was something ugly in his tone.
Alinath flinched.
Seraph frowned, having never seen Alinath afraid of anything before—except Seraph herself on that one memorable occasion. She’d certainly never seen anyone afraid of Bandor. Alinath’s face quickly rearranged itself to the usual embittered expression she wore around Seraph, leaving only a glint of fear in her eyes.
“Thank you, Bandor, for your custom and your advice,” Seraph said.
As soon as the door was closed behind Seraph and she’d started up the narrow, twisty road, she muttered to her absent husband. “See what happens when you are away too long, Tier? You’d better get home soon, or those Elders are in for a rude surprise.”
She wasn’t really worried about the Elders. They weren’t stupid enough to confront her, no matter what they thought should be done for Rinnie’s benefit. Once Tier was home, he could talk them out of whatever stupidity Alinath had talked them into. He was good at that sort of thing. And if she was wrong, and the Elders came to try to take Rinnie before Tier was home… well, she might have failed in her duties to her people, but she would never fail her children.
She wasn’t worried about Rinnie—but Tier was another matter entirely. A thousand things could have delayed Tier’s return, she reminded herself. He might even now be waiting at home.
Even hardened by farmwork, Seraph’s calves ached by the time she came to the door of Willon’s shop near the top edge of the village. When she opened the homey door and stepped into the building, Willon was talking to a stranger with several open packs on the floor, so she walked past him and into the store.
The only other person in the store was Ciro, the tanner’s father, who was stringing a small harp. The old man looked up when she came in and returned her nod before going back to the harp.
Willon’s store had once been a house. When he’d purchased it, he’d excavated and built until his store extended well into the mountain. He’d stocked the dark corners of the store with odds and bits from his merchant days—and some of those were odd indeed—then added whatever he felt might sell.
Seraph doubted many people knew what some of his things were worth, but she recognized silk when she saw it—though doubtless the only piece in Redern resided on the wall behind a shelf of carved ducks in Willon’s shop.
She seldom had the money to shop here, but she loved to explore. It reminded her of the strange places she’d been. Here was a bit of jade from an island far to the south, and there a chipped cup edged in a design that reminded her of a desert tribe who painted their cheeks with a similar pattern.
Some of Willon’s wares were new, but much of it was secondhand. In a back corner of one of a half dozen alcoves she found boxes of old boots and shoes that still had a bit of life left in them.
She took out the string she’d knotted and began measuring it against the boots. In the very bottom of the second box she searched, she found a pair made of thinner leather than usual for work boots. The sole was made for walking miles on roads or forest trails, rather than tromping through the mud of a farmer’s field. Her fingers lingered on the decorative stitches on the top edge, hesitating where the right boot was stained with blood—though someone had obviously worked to clean it away. Traveler’s boots.
She didn’t compare them to her son’s feet, just set them back in the box and piled a dozen pairs of other boots on top of them, as if covering them would let her forget about them. In a third bin, she found what she was looking for, and took a sturdy pair of boots up to the front.
There is nothing I could have done, she told herself. I am not a Traveler and have not been for years.
But even knowing it was true, she couldn’t help the tug of guilt that tried to tell her differently: to tell her that her place had never been here, safe in Tier’s little village, but out in the world protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves.
“I can’t sell those here,” she heard Willon say to a stranger at the front counter—a tinker by the color of his packs. “Folk ’round here get upset with writing they can’t read—old traps of the Shadowed still linger in these mountains. They know to fear magic, and even a stupid person’s going to notice that those have Traveler’s marks on them.”
“I bought them from a man in Korhadan. He claimed to have collected them all,” said the tinker. “I paid him two silvers. I’ve had to carry them from there to here. I’ll sell them for ten coppers, the entire bag, sir, for I’m that tired of them. You’re the eighth merchant in as many towns as told me the same thing, and they take up space in my packs as I might use for something else. You surely could melt them down for something useful.”
On the counter lay an assortment of objects that appeared something like metal feathers. One end was sharp for a few inches, almost daggerlike, but the other end was decorative and lacy. Some were short, but most were as long as Seraph’s forearm, and one nearly twice that long. There must have been nearly a hundred of them—mermori.
“My son can work metal,” said Seraph, around the pulse of sorrow that beat too heavily in her throat. There were so many of them. “He could turn these into horseshoes. I can pay you six coppers.”
“Done,” cried the fellow before Willon could say a thing. He bundled them up in a worn leather bag and handed it to Seraph, taking the coins she handed him.
He gathered his packs together and carried them off as if he were afraid she’d renege if he waited.
Willon shook his head, “You shouldn’t have bought those, Seraph Tieraganswife. Poor luck follows those who buy goods gotten by banditry and murder the way those probably were.”
A merchant to the bone, Willon should have objected to her buying outright from the tinker rather than cut him in for a percentage—but things like that happened when mermori were involved.
“Travelers’ spells don’t hurt those of Traveler blood,” she said in a low voice that wouldn’t carry to others in the store.
Willon looked startled for a moment. “Ah. Yes, I had almost forgotten that.”
“My sons tell me that they don’t call it that anymore.” Willon shook his head in disapproval. “The present emperor’s father declared the Travelers beyond the protection of his laws. The old man’s been dead for years, but his son’s not going to change anything. He shuts himself up in the palace and listens to people who tell him stories without questioning the truth from falsehood, poor boy.”
He spoke as if he knew him, but Seraph let it pass without comment. Tier had told her that he thought that the caravanning business Willon had retired from had been richer than he let on. He hadn’t changed much from when he’d first come, other than the gradual lightening of his hair to white. Though he must have been nearing his seventh decade, he looked much younger than that.
“Ah well,” she said. “They’re pretty enough, but they’ll make shoes for horses and buckles for harness, sir—surely if Travelers had that much magic left they’d have used it to save themselves.” She set the boots she’d selected on the counter. “Now, I need these for Jes, but I’ve spent my coppers on the metal bits. In my pack I have some wild honey. I’ve sold a dozen jars to Bandor at the bakery below for a half-penny apiece, and I’ve a little more than twice that left.” She’d looked, and hadn’t seen any honey in the section where he kept a variety of jarred and dried goods.
“My brother-in-law told me to tell you I sold him his at a copper each,” she added with a small smile. Willon was one of the few villagers she felt comfortable talking to—probably because he was an outsider too.
“Aye, and he should have paid you that,” said Willon with a snort. “Doubtless you know it, too. Taking advantage of his own kin.”
“If Tier were home, we’d have given him the honey,” she said, “which Bandor knows also.”
Willon grinned. “I’ll buy what you’ve left for a copper each—that’s a fair price. Especially if when that boy of yours finds more honey, you bring it to me first.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “Thank you, Willon.”
Thirty coppers for the honey minus ten for the boots left her with twenty coppers, almost a whole silver. She tucked the coins in her satchel as she left Willon’s shop, closing the door gently on the first few notes of Ciro’s harp.
Her mind more on the mermori she’d bought from the trader than on where she was going, she almost ran over a man who stood in the way.
“Excuse me,” she said apologetically, looking into his face.
It was a good face, even-featured and wide-mouthed. He was no one she knew, which was unusual. The village was small enough that even with as little time as she spent there she knew everyone in it—at least by sight.
“A Traveler,” he said in a tone of near delight that shocked her.
Her reaction must have been easy to read because he laughed. “I must sound like an idiot—I just hadn’t expected to run into a Traveler here. I thought your people avoid coming here. Some aversion to being so near Shadow’s Fall?”
Aversion to being near people so fearful of magic, she almost answered him, but not even surprise could loosen her habitual control over her tongue.
A look of comprehension crossed his face. “You must be Seraph Tieraganswife. That’s why people speak of you…” he seemed to realized that however people spoke of her wouldn’t exactly be flattering and stumbled to a halt.
If she had not been holding a bag of mermori that reminded her of the plight of the Travelers and her failure to live the life she’d been called to serve, she might have helped him. But he’d talked his way into offense, and she let him find his own way out.
“I am sorry,” he said sincerely after a moment. “When I am excited I tend to talk too much. Let me introduce myself properly. I am Volis, priest of the Path of the Five.”
“Seraph Tieraganswife,” she replied shortly, though she made no move to leave. He was distracting her from her guilt, and for the moment she was content that he continue to do so.
She’d known that there was a new priest in town, of course. Even if she’d forgotten, the new temple at the very top of the road would have reminded her. He’d come from Taela with the new Sept last fall, and stayed when the Sept returned to his duties in the capitol of the Empire. But she hadn’t paid much heed to the news—she was still too much Traveler to worship in the houses of the gods.
Volis grinned at her, “I was right. I’m sorry to overwhelm you, but the Travelers are a hobby of mine, though I’ve only met a few of them.”
What was she to say to that? she wondered and said nothing.
“Do you have a while to spare?” he asked. “I have a wealth of questions to ask you—and I’d like to show you the temple.”
She glanced at the sun, but her business had taken very little time and the pack of mermori was a cold, hard thing she would have to deal with as soon as she left Redern.
So she raised an eyebrow and nodded her head. Tier would have laughed and called her “Empress” if she had done such a thing to him. This boy merely smiled, as if he’d been certain she would follow him. He had, she thought, a tithe of Tier’s charm and was used to having people obey him.
He turned and led the way up the road, which was so steep that it was set in stairs.
“I would have been just as happy with something like the rest of Redern,” he said. “But the new Sept was convinced that I would be happier in something more modern looking.”
“The Sept is a follower of your five gods?” Seraph asked.
“Gods save us, no,” laughed Volis. “But he was willing to do a favor when a few of the Path’s Elders twisted his arm to place a temple here.”
“Why here?” asked Seraph. “Why not in Leheigh, which also belongs to the Sept? Surely you would find more followers in the larger city.”
Volis smiled. “I have not done so badly here. Your own family attends my meetings. In fact, I was on my way to consult with Bandor when you ran into me—and I couldn’t resist the chance to have a Traveler to speak to. But the main reason I am here—instead of a really big city, like Korhadan, for instance—is Shadow’s Fall. We feel that there are things on the old battlefield that might enlighten us.”
Shadow’s Fall? Seraph bit back her opinion of the stupidity of anyone who wanted to explore there. Doubtless the battlefield could educate this solsenti fool better than she.
Like Willon’s shop and many of the buildings on the steeper slopes, the temple had been built into the mountain. The facade was raw timber and crude, except for the doors, which were smooth and oiled until they were almost black.
Volis ushered her inside, and Seraph had to stop in the threshold to allow her eyes to adjust from the brightness outside.
The room was a richly appointed antechamber that would have been more at home in a Sept’s keep than in a village temple. Either the—what was it Volis had called it? — the Path of the Five was a rich church indeed, or the Sept owed its Elders a lot of favors.
“There are only three temples,” said Volis, seeing her expression. “Two in Taela and this one. We intend this to be a place of pilgrimage.”
“Shadow’s Fall,” said Seraph, “a place of pilgrimage.”
“Where the Five triumphed over evil,” said the priest, apparently oblivious to the doubt in her voice. “Come and see the refuge, where I hold services.”
Seraph followed him through a tapestry-curtained entrance into a room like none she’d ever seen before.
The excavations were far more extensive than she had thought. The ceiling of the chamber soared overhead like an upside-down bowl. Near the edge it was a single handspan over the doorway, in the center of the room it rose three times the height of a tall man. The stone walls, floors, and ceiling were as smooth as polished marble.
This… this was built in the short season since the new Sept came to explore his inheritance?
The ceiling was painted a light sky-blue that darkened gradually to black on the walls. The light that illum
inated the room seemed to emanate from that skylike ceiling. Magic, thought Seraph, solsenti magic. But her attention was on the figures that occupied the false firmament. Chasing each other endlessly around the perimeter of the ceiling were five life-sized birds painted with exquisite detail.
Volis was silent as she walked past him to the center of the room.
Lark, she thought, chills creeping down her spine. A cormorant’s brilliant eyes invited her to play in the stormy winds. An owl glided on silent wings toward the black raven, who held a bright silver and ruby ring in its mouth, while next in line a falcon began its stoop. Together they circled the room, caught in endless flight.
In the center of the ceiling, twice as large as any other, a river eagle caught the winds and twisted its head to look down upon the room as if to examine its prey.
Each bird a representative of the six Orders of the Travelers.
“Behold the Five,” said Volis softly in a language Seraph hadn’t heard since the day her brother died. “Lark the healer, Cormorant who rules the weather, Owl of wisdom and memory, Raven the mage, Falcon the hunter. And above them all, trapped in darkness is the secret god, the lost god. You didn’t know about the lost god, did you?”
“They are not gods,” said Seraph in her tongue. Though, she remembered, in the old stories of before they Traveled, her people had believed that there were gods as he had described. But as the Old Wizards had grown in knowledge and power they had put those fallacies behind them.
As if she hadn’t spoken, Volis pointed to the eagle. “I found him, in books so old they crumbled at my touch, in hints in ancient songs. For generations the Elders of the Path have worshiped only the Five—until I found the lost god.”
“The Eagle?” said Seraph, caught between an urge to laugh at the idea of solsenti worshiping the Orders as gods, and distaste. Distaste won.
“The Eagle.” He looked pleased. “My discovery led me to be honored by this appointment,” he waved a hand to indicate the temple.
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