With a glance at the sky, Jes measured the time he’d spent in the woods. As usual, it was longer than he’d thought but not so long that Lehr should be finished plowing. Something must have happened to Skew.
He started to increase his pace, but slowed when the woman stumbled beside him. She didn’t have the knack of walking over plowed ground. He swooped, picked her up, and carried her over their field. Remembering her request, though, he set her down on the other side and continued his determined course to the barn.
Lehr carried a heavy, steaming bucket to the barn and was oblivious to them until Jes called out his name.
Lehr halted and set down the bucket. “Jes? I thought you were out looking for a child?”
Jes frowned. “I found her in the woods,” he said, because it somehow fit Lehr’s questions. “Is something wrong with Skew?”
“No, no,” his brother automatically soothed, staring at the woman. “He’s fine. But he was so tired, I thought it would be better to stop. I’m bringing him some hot bran mash and Rinnie’s giving him a rubdown so he’s not so stiff and sore tomorrow.” He frowned. “Jes, who is this?”
Jes frowned back, though he knew his frown wasn’t as impressive as Lehr’s. “This is the one I was sent for,” he said.
Lehr smiled suddenly and shook his head. “All right, Jes. Good afternoon, lady. I am Lehr Tieraganson. You’ve already met my brother Jes.”
The stranger he’d brought back with him tugged at Jes’s hand gently and he released her.
“I am called Hennea,” she said. “I am looking for the Traveler called Seraph.”
“This one went to where Father was killed,” said Jes, because the Guardian reminded him that it was important. “The forest king followed her and then held her for us. He thought she was coming here, which was fine with him.”
“So why did he send for you?” asked Lehr after a moment, and the woman, Hennea, looked as if she’d like to know, too.
Jes sighed. “I’m not sure.” But it was something Mother should know, and Lehr would remember to tell her. So he prodded the Guardian, who could make a better answer.
Lehr took a step back when the Guardian came, and that made Jes sad. The Guardian didn’t like frightening his family.
“The forest king said that she had dark magic and power and he didn’t want her in his territory.”
Jes came back quickly, because the Guardian was unpredictable and might decide that the woman could be a threat to his territory, too. Jes didn’t want him to scare her because… because he liked her.
“Dark magic?” asked Lehr, with a look at Hennea.
She put out her hand and showed him her wrist and tapped on the bracelet there. Jes didn’t like it, nor did the Guardian—it smelled wrong.
“I expect that he’s talking about this. Who is the forest king?”
Lehr smiled suddenly and shrugged. “I don’t know, actually. I thought he was a story that Jes made up until I met him today.” He turned to Jes. “Who is the forest king?”
Jes squirmed, uncomfortable with all the attention that they had been paying him. The Guardian didn’t like people looking at him too much. “He’s the forest king,” he mumbled, almost forgetting the question in his discomfort.
Lehr seemed to sense how Jes was feeling because he said, “Come with me,” picked up the bucket, and continued out to the barn.
Depressed and weary of both grief and anger, Seraph almost didn’t notice that there was something wrong as she walked up to her cabin.
Alinath had already heard about Tier—Forder had stayed overnight in Redern and spread the news. She’d approached Alinath expecting to deal with shock and grief, but found Tier’s sister waiting for her with anger and blame, instead.
It was only when Gura didn’t greet her that Seraph set the stress of the unhappy meeting she’d had with Alinath aside and looked around. The boys weren’t in the field, and Rinnie wasn’t working in the garden.
She whistled and was rewarded with a bark, and Gura dashed out of the barn to welcome her with a wuff of apology for his tardiness. He followed at her heels as she headed for the barn.
Something must have happened to Skew, she thought.
The interior of the barn was dim in comparison to the afternoon light, so she was still half-blind when she heard Lehr say, “Here she is, now. Mother, we have a visitor.”
As her vision cleared, Seraph saw Skew with his head buried in a grain bucket. Rinnie was standing next to him with a brush in her hand. Jes slouched against the barn wall a few feet from Lehr and a woman: a Traveler woman wearing a solsenti dress who stared at Seraph with pale eyes.
Seraph felt her eyebrows climb in surprise and instinctive dismay. She had enough trouble on her hands, and a lone Traveler could only be bringing more.
“I am Hennea,” the woman said. “Raven of the Clan of Rivilain Moon-Haired.”
“Seraph, Raven of the Clan of Isolda the Silent,” replied Seraph. She waited and Lehr obliged her.
“Jes’s forest king came this morning,” he said, sounding a bit bemused. “He told us that there was a child loose in the woods and asked Jes to fetch her. Jes brought Hennea back. He told me that the forest king didn’t want her in his territory because she held dark magic and power.”
“This is dark magic,” said Hennea, holding up her wrist.
Seraph closed the distance between them and set her hands on either side of the leather and bead bracelet. “Solsenti wizardry,” she said shortly. “A geas?”
Hennea nodded. “Yes.”
Seraph knew of only one wizard anywhere near Redern. “Volis the priest has bound you to his service?”
Hennea smiled faintly. “Yes.”
He’d been hiding her then. Seraph had not the slightest doubt that if any of the villagers knew that there was another Traveler in the vicinity they would have told her so.
“I can help you rid yourself of this.” Seraph didn’t know the exact method, but she was confident it would be in one of Isolda’s books: wizards of Isolda’s time had been fond of binding others to their services. Any spell that could break a spell woven by the Colossae wizards could be adapted to sever the bonds of a solsenti wizard without too much trouble.
“No,” said Hennea, curling her hand into a fist. “Not yet. When the time comes I will rid myself of it.”
“Jes said the forest king told him that she went directly from Redern to the place where Father was killed. From there, he thought that she was trying to reach us,” Lehr’s voice was neutral.
“Ah,” said Seraph, narrowing her eyes at the other woman. “Why don’t you tell me more about yourself, Hennea, Raven of Rivilain Moon-Haired?”
“Thank you,” said Hennea, who appeared to have been waiting for Seraph’s invitation. “I am no Owl, so I ask that you bear with my tale as I tell it. Two years ago I and my lover, who was a Raven and my student, were taken by solsenti wizards who bound us with Raven magics.”
How could solsenti bind with Raven magic? Hennea paused as if she expected Seraph to ask, but Seraph seldom interrupted. Doubtless it was a question to be addressed later in Hennea’s story.
When Seraph said nothing, Hennea continued. “We were taken to some sort of stronghold where these wizards—there were six of them and some greater number of lesser wizardlings, performed a ritual of magic upon me.”
She stopped again, but Seraph didn’ t think it had anything to do with her audience. It looked more as if she were fighting the memory’s hold; her hands were clenched at her side and sweat gathered on her forehead. Jes stepped forward and set a hand on Hennea’s shoulder, the unexpected action telling Seraph that the Guardian had accepted Hennea.
“Are the details of the spell important now?” asked Seraph more gently than she’d first intended.
“Not now,” said Hennea. “Only that their magic failed. They blamed the failure on one wizard who had not done the spell before—Volis. They coached him, and tried three more times. After the last time they
conceded that the spell had been performed perfectly, but that something about the way it had been misworked the first time had rendered me an unfit subject. So they took Moselm, he who was my student.”
She was breathing heavier now, and Seraph saw her blink hard. “I didn’t even notice at first—I was too wrapped up in my own pain—but then he began screaming and screaming.”
She closed her eyes briefly, as if that could shut out the sound. With her eyes closed, Hennea looked very young; Seraph had thought her ten years older than Jes, but she wasn’t so certain now.
“When they finished with him,” Hennea said, “they took him out of the room, still screaming. I never saw him again. I didn’t even know what their spell casting did because I was too raw from what they had done to me.”
She gave Seraph a bitter smile. “These wizards were as confident as if they had come fresh from Colossae. They talked of killing me, as I was no good for their purposes, but the young wizard—Volis, who is the priest of their twisted religion here—asked if he might keep me to see if he could discover what he had done. So they let him bind me with this”—she held up her wrist—“and made me his plaything.”
“I accused them of arrogance,” she said. “But I was arrogant, too. I could have broken free of this geas—it might hold a solsenti wizard or even a Traveler who was not Raven, but as you have seen, it will not hold a Raven long. But they presented a puzzle to me. How had solsenti wizards worked Raven magic? Even more worrisome, I didn’t think that we were the first Ravens they had taken. They knew too well how to neutralize anything I might have done for my defense—and with the exception of Volis, they had all performed their ritual before. I reasoned that whatever they had done to Moselm, it had already been done. If I could reverse it, I could reverse it later as well—after I discovered what they were doing.”
“So you waited,” said Seraph.
Hennea nodded. “For a year or so I bided my time and learned what I could. We were in Taela secreted within the Emperor’s own palace. The wizards ruled over a group of solsenti called the Secret Path of the Five Gods. I saw only the wizards, who are relatively few, but there are apparently many others, all men—noblemen and high-ranked merchants and the like—men of power.”
“Volis seemed sincere in his devotion,” said Seraph. “Obsessive even. Not a man who is seeking after political power.”
Hennea nodded. “Oh, they take themselves very seriously, including this religion that someone thought up a few centuries or so ago as a way to encourage bored young noblemen to join up. Can you think of anything a young man would like better than to shock his family? Worshiping like a Traveler is beyond offensive.”
“Travelers don’t worship gods,” said Rinnie, who’d been brushing Skew as Hennea talked.
“No, indeed,” agreed Hennea. “But Volis doesn’t believe that. We Travelers like to keep our secrets, and he thinks he knows them. He likes me to spout his own theories back to him. I don’t think he really knows how this geas really works. He thought it made”—she glanced over her shoulder at Rinnie and gave Seraph an ironic smile—“made us friends. But he likes to believe in lies. One night, while we were still in Taela, he came into his rooms a little worse for drink—something he seldom did. He was wearing a crude ring made of silver and rose quartz and reeking of tainted magic.” She sat down abruptly on the small bench Rinnie used as a mounting block.
“Unto Raven it is given to know the Order,” she whispered. “Somehow they had stolen Moselm’s Order and put it into the ring. Volis was drunk from celebrating Moselm’s death—and worried because it hadn’t gone quite as planned. It seems that capturing the Order once it’s taken from a Traveler is very difficult and sometimes fails.”
“They did what?” asked Seraph, appalled.
“They killed him and retained the power of the Order in the stone,” said Hennea with Raven calm. “Their spell slowly rips the Order away from a Traveler over a period of some months. Many of the stones are all but useless, but the ones that work can be worn in a ring or necklace. Then the solsenti wizards become Raven, Falcon, or Cormorant as they wish.”
Dread closed Seraph’s throat. It was starting again, as if the mermori had been harbingers of things to come. Tier had died, and now Seraph would be forced to live as she had before she met him.
“I don’t know what I can do to help you,” she said at last, because, in the end, there was no choice. “I can take a message to the clans, though I don’t know where any are at present. I will give you what aid I can.”
“You don’t understand,” Hennea said. “I’ve come to help you.”
CHAPTER 6
“You are going to help me?” asked Seraph. “With what?”
Hennea smiled grimly. “Your new Sept travels with quite an entourage.”
“Including you and Volis,” Seraph said. “Is the Sept one of the… what did you call them, something stupid… the Secret Path?”
“The Sept?” she said. “No, not him, at least I don’t think so. He’s charismatic, the Emperor’s best if not only friend, and he’s very good at political games. No one is surprised at the number of people who follow him around. Volis said that someone called in a few debts and offered a favor or two so that the Sept would agree to build a Temple of the Five Gods here.”
Hennea stood up and began pacing in abrupt, quick steps. “The Secret Path decided to bring the religion out into the public. They don’t tell people that they get their five gods from the Travelers’ Orders, of course.”
“There are six Orders,” observed Rinnie.
“They don’t know about the Guardian,” said Jes. “Travelers don’t talk about their mistakes.”
“You are not a mistake,” said Seraph, though Jes was more right than wrong about the Travelers’ reasoning regarding the Guardians. “Travelers protect the Guardians’ secrets because your Order works better that way.” As if that settled the matter, Seraph turned back to Hennea, and sorted through her story for some way to change the subject. “Why did this Path of yours change and decide to bring their church to the masses?”
Hennea shook her head. “I don’t know. Volis thinks that it’s because the truth must be made known—but Volis wouldn’t know the truth if it tore his throat out. I don’t think that all of the wizards believe in their made-up gods, so there must be another reason.”
“Volis told me they chose to set his temple here because of Shadow’s Fall.”
“I’ve heard him say that, too,” agreed Hennea. “I don’t know what they want with Shadow’s Fall, but I suppose that whatever power still lurks there can defend itself more than adequately.”
“Indeed,” said Seraph. “My husband is proof of that.”
“No,” said Hennea. “I don’t think that he is.”
Seraph stiffened. “Oh?” she said softly.
“There were some wizards who traveled with us from Taela. They stayed with the Sept when Volis moved us into the new temple.” She stopped her pacing to frown down at Seraph. “Understand, please, that I’ve had to take a few facts and string them together. A few days ago, Volis got some correspondence from Taela. It wasn’t signed, but from the content I think that it was from one of the wizards who came here with us. The letter devoted an entire paragraph to your family—unless there is another family with a Raven, Falcon, and Cormorant?”
“No,” said Seraph softly.
Hennea nodded once and began to pace again. “Someone’s taken a Raven’s eye to your home—and a real Raven would know that you had a Guardian, too. So it must have been one of the Path’s wizards wearing one of their stones.”
Seraph nodded.
“I’d been listening to talk since we came here, and I heard of a Traveler mage married to a solsenti farmer. Since it was unlikely that any other Travelers had settled here, I could only suppose that you’d been blessed with two Ordered children, half-blood or not. I decided to warn you as soon as I could, though there seemed to be no particular urgency. Then, last
night, a man came to tell Volis that your husband’s dead horse had been found with a few human bones. Tier’s dead, they said, and they mourned the loss of his music.”
Hennea stopped again, rubbing her wrist absently. “And I thought on that letter I’d read. The first line read, ‘we have the Owl safe here.’ ”
Seraph froze as her heart leapt to her throat. “By Lark and Raven,” she said, imbuing the words with compulsion, “do not mislead me on this.”
Hennea nodded to herself in satisfaction. “Your husband was Traveler and Owl and they took him to Taela to work their magic on him.”
“My husband was Rederni born and bred—but given to the Order of the Owl,” corrected Seraph absently to give herself time to regain control. Tier was alive? “If there was Traveler blood in his lineage it was a long time ago.”
“Ah,” said Hennea, revealing mild surprise. “I’ve never heard of something like that.” She rubbed her wrist again. “Anyway. I waited until Volis left on business this morning and set out to find the place where the huntsman found your husband’s horse. It wasn’t difficult to follow the huntsman’s trail.”
“What did you find?” asked Seraph, her voice so soft that Lehr shifted uncomfortably.
Hennea shook her head. “Not much.” She shivered and clenched her hand over her wrist where Volis’s geas band held her. “I have to get back soon.” She straightened slightly and continued, “The huntsman and his men buried both the horse and the skull, and I had no means to dig them up. I found hints of old magic, but nothing that would cause a person’s death. There were a few tracks—but I’m not a Falcon to be certain of anything the tracks could tell.”
“Lehr is,” said Rinnie.
“Yes,” said Hennea, “I know. I had hoped to prove my suspicions before I talked to you—but I’m unlikely to get a chance to come so far again. Take your Falcon and find out what they did. Then come and help me deal with Volis—and I’ll help you find your husband.”
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