Jes took back his human form and gathered Rinnie into his arms. “The priest is wrong,” he said, and the voice thundered in bass notes almost too deep to hear, as if he still held part-way to the wolfshape.
“He’s been shadowed,” agreed Seraph.
But Seraph had given the priest too long. He threw a blast of raw magic at her and she was forced to counter it—more than counter it, because she had to protect those around her. She held the magic for a moment then returned it to him. Because it was his magic, it did not harm him, just allowed him to reabsorb it. Not an ideal solution, because he retrieved the energy he’d sent at her, but no one else got hurt.
While she’d been trying to decide what to do with it, he’d had time to gather more power and he flung it at her, forcing her back several steps. She caught it and flung it back again, but it was more of an effort. She couldn’t keep doing it indefinitely because she continued to lose power and he didn’t.
He also learned quickly. The third shot was no less powerful, but he broadened his target to include everyone in the room. She had no choice but to absorb the full force of his hit, or let something escape where it might hurt one of her children.
Tears of pain slipped down her face as she staggered and swayed, then someone touched her and the pain lessened.
For a dazed instant, the voice and strong hands that pressed into her shoulders were Tier’s. Then, as the effects of the priest’s attack faded, she realized it was Hennea behind her, offering her support and power.
She needed a shield like the one Volis had set to encase them when they had entered the room, but she didn’t have time to throw a shield around everyone. Instead, she created a shield and set it around Volis. For a moment the whole area around Volis lit up, but then the shield fell apart, a victim of its hasty construction.
He laughed. “Try this,” he said and sketched a sigil in the air.
She blocked most of it, but the straining of her magic past her reserves almost blinded her with pain, and the remnants of his sorcery sent both Seraph and Hennea tumbling to the ground.
She wouldn’t be able to hold out against a second such blast.
“Hennea,” she whispered. “When I tell you, jump away, then get the others out of here.” If she could distract Volis long enough, maybe her children could escape.
“No,” said Hennea.
A breeze blew a stray lock of hair into Seraph’s eyes.
Wrath lighting his face, Volis drew back his hand in the manner of a man throwing a rock. Hennea took control of the remnants of Seraph’s shields and refined them as Volis’s hand released whatever it was he’d formed and the spell bounced off harmlessly.
Wind cooled the sweat on Seraph’s forehead—she had just enough time to realize that there shouldn’t be a wind when a sudden gust of it knocked her to her knees.
The wind picked up even more speed, turning Seraph’s hair into a vicious whip that stung her eyes and cheeks as her left knee made painful contact with the floor. The table Volis had been working on skidded across the floor, hit the wall, then flung itself at the priest’s head.
Temporarily occupied defending himself from his furnishings, Volis quit concentrating on Seraph; but any magic would draw his attention.
Seraph drew her knife and staggered to her feet, bracing herself against the wind.
“Hennea,” she said, her voice low. “Is there a cure for the shadowing that you know and I do not?”
Seraph thought for a moment that Hennea had fallen too far away to hear her, but then Hennea said, “No. There is no cure but death.”
Seraph crouched and used the motion of the wind and a feathering of magic to creep up behind Volis. When she was close enough she rushed forward, and stepped on the back of his knee, collapsing the joint so the wizard staggered backward, off balance. She threw her left arm around his chin to hold him steady and jerked her knife into his neck as Tier had once taught her. The sharp knife cut through Volis’s throat, severing skin and artery.
Seraph stumbled back, fighting the wind for her balance. Victory came so quickly, brought to her by the sharp blade of her knife. Her first kill. She wondered if she’d used magic to kill him, if it would seem more real to her.
The young man’s body fought for a while, but pain blocked his own magic and the extremity of his emotions kept Raven magic from coming to his aid—rings or no. Seraph watched because it seemed an act of cowardice to turn away from a death she had summoned.
When he was dead, Seraph turned away to survey the room. Lehr, bless him, had remembered what she told him. He had Bandor pinned face against the wall in some sort of wrestling hold. Hennea had gotten to her hands and knees and crawled against the wind toward Volis’s body. Jes, looking exhausted, sat on the floor near—
Ah, Seraph thought ruefully, that’s where the wind came from.
Rinnie’s hair spread out in pale flames as she stood motionless, arms spread with palms out like some ancient statue, her skirts absolutely still though the wind still tore furiously through the room. Jes must have cut her loose because there were no ropes on her, though lines on either side of her mouth showed where they had been. Her eyes glowed with an eerie gold light that obscured her pupils.
Words of warning, long forgotten, came back to Seraph. To be a weather witch was always to long for the energies that coursed and strew themselves in tempestuous weather, always to be in danger of being so caught up that there was no way back.
“Rinnie,” she said firmly. “We are safe, call back the winds and let them sleep.”
Her daughter stared blankly at her with incandescent eyes and the winds swirled and played. An inkwell flipped out of nowhere and caught Seraph painfully on the elbow.
“Rinnie!” barked Seraph in the same tone she used to break up sibling squabbles. “Enough.”
Rinnie blinked, and the wind died down to gentle gusts and then nothing. Small items dropped to the ground with clattering noises. Rinnie fell to her hands and knees, and Seraph hurried across the room and crouched beside her.
“How is it with you? Are you well?”
Rinnie nodded. “Sorry, Mother. I’m just a bit dizzy.” Then she gave a ghost of her usual grin to Jes. “That was better than changing into an animal.”
“Mother,” said Lehr, “What do you need to do with Uncle Bandor? I can’t hold him here forever.”
Bandor was shadowed. Her hand tightened on her knife—but before she could do more than rise back to her feet, Hennea said, “No, Seraph. I lied. The shadow can be cleansed.”
Seraph stilled. “What?”
Hennea sat on the floor beside the dead priest, her cheeks painted with his blood. “I lied. I swore that this one would die. It is fitting that he should die in his sins. But I can cleanse the baker with your help.”
“Seraph? Bandor?” Alinath’s voice rang down the corridor.
If she and Hennea were going to help Bandor, Seraph didn’t have time to be angry with her now.
“Jes? Can you keep Alinath at bay without hurting her or yourself?” asked Seraph. “If we are working more magic tonight, we can’t have her interrupting us.”
“Yes,” said Jes, using the wall to get to his feet. He took a couple of half-drunken steps and came to the doorway. Alinath got there first, but stopped just short of Jes.
“We need to get this done,” said Seraph. “I think I could just possibly light a magelight. Do you have the magic, and can you concentrate well enough to use it?”
Hennea rose painfully to her feet, using her good arm for leverage. “I think I’m too numb to hurt and I am not as spent as you are. It’ll be all right.”
She limped over to Lehr and Bandor and spoke a word. Glowing lines circled Bandor’s wrists and ankles.
“Release him, please,” she said, and Lehr stepped away from him.
With the silvery threads of magic, Hennea forced Bandor around so that he stood with his back flat against the wall.
He spat at her. “Shadowspawn Witch.
You should burn in the fires of good rowan and oak.”
Ignoring him, Hennea reached for his head and forced him to look at her. Seraph stood as near as she dared.
Hennea took a firm grip on Bandor’s hair and then set another glowing line about his forehead to hold his head where she wanted it.
“You can’t allow them to distract you,” she explained to Seraph in Traveler’s speech. “If you have to start again it’s twice as hard to grasp it.”
Once she had him unable to move she reached up to place a hand on his forehead. He struggled then, fighting the restraints like a madman—but Hennea had done a good job, and his head never moved.
“It’s hard to find—the shadowing. It’ll help if I’m more familiar with him. Tell me something of him—how the shadow caught him.”
“His name is Bandor,” said Seraph. “He is married to my husband’s sister. He has always been a man of even temperament, a fair man if a bit greedy.” But only a bit. The low price he’d given her for Jes’s honey had been out of character, she realized. With family, he’d always been inclined to be generous. “His parents were not Rederni and he was never really accepted until he married Alinath, my husband’s sister.”
Hennea sent off questioning tendrils of magic, which passed through Bandor like a hot knife through butter, slipping and sliding.
“What does he want?” Hennea asked. “What drives him?”
That was harder. “I don’t know,” Seraph said finally. “Reducing a man to a handful of words is no gift of mine.” She turned to her youngest, who knew him best.
“Rinnie,” she said in Common tongue. “If Uncle Bandor could be, or have, anything in the world what would he want?”
“Children,” said Rinnie promptly, though her voice shook. “He and Aunt Alinath want children more than anything. He also worries that Papa might decide to return to the bakery. Last year when the harvests weren’t good, he was certain Papa would take the bakery. Nothing Papa said could reassure him.”
Seraph remembered that now; it hadn’t seemed important at the time.
One of the tendrils of Hennea’s magic snagged and went taut, like a fisherman’s net. Another slid to the same place and stuck fast as well. A third caught another place.
“More,” said Hennea. “Tell me more about him, child.”
“He loves Aunt Alinath,” Rinnie said with more confidence. “But he worries that she loves Papa better. He wants her to see him as a better man than Papa.”
The rest of the tendrils snapped taut like the strings of a violin and emitted a sound as if an invisible musician plucked at the instrument.
“Envy,” murmured Hennea in the Traveler tongue. “Small darknesses that allow the shadow to take hold and shake him a bit until the small darkness grows like a blot on his soul. You have to ferret them all out, Seraph, and not miss any. Could you have your Hunter see if I’ve missed anything?”
“Lehr,” said Seraph. “Come here and look. Does the net she’s woven encase the taint?”
Lehr examined his Uncle closely. “Missed something,” he said.
“He wants,” murmured Seraph. “He loves. He hates. He fears.”
“He’s afraid of you, Mother,” said Rinnie at last. “He doesn’t much care for Jes either.” She gave her brother’s back an apologetic look. “He doesn’t like to be around people who are odd like Jes is.”
Hennea, lines of strain appearing around her eyes and mouth, sent out more magic.
“Done,” said Lehr.
“Mother,” said Jes.
Seraph turned and saw that Alinath had company in the doorway. Karadoc was with her. He’d managed to take a few steps forward, so he stood several paces in front of the door. But when Jes looked at him, he stilled once more.
“We’ll be done momentarily,” said Hennea. “I wouldn’t try this without one who can see the shadow. Otherwise it’s too easy to fail—and you’ll not know it until the shadowed one kills those nearest to him.”
“Like the Nameless King, the Shadowed,” said Seraph. “When he killed his sons first.”
“He allowed no Travelers within his realm,” said Hennea. “So now we go where we are needed, not where we are wanted.”
“What next?” said Seraph.
Hennea smiled wearily. “The last part is more strength than finesse. I’ll try to burn the shadow from him.”
“Let me help,” said Seraph. “I’m all but done up, but you may freely take what magic I have left.” She followed her words with action, setting the blooded knife on the floor and placing her hands on Hennea’s shoulders.
Hennea thanked her with a nod and then set about destroying the hold the Stalker had taken on Bandor’s soul. It was, Seraph saw, much the same as burning wood with magic, just using a different fuel. If she had to do it herself, she’d know how.
“Done,” said Hennea, but Seraph, feeling the last of the shadowing leave, had already stepped away.
Bandor had long since stopped his struggles, but now he hung limply in the bonds that held him to the wall, his face blank and his mouth drooping on either side. A drop of spittle dripped slowly off his chin.
“Lehr,” she said. “Come help me with Bandor.”
Lehr helped Seraph brace his uncle so that Hennea could release him. Once on his feet, Bandor seemed to recover a bit. At least he could stand on his own and his face started to lose the blankness and adopt some of Bandor’s own personality, like a wineskin refilled with wine.
Lehr still braced him, but Seraph stepped away—remembering what Rinnie had said about his fear of her. She didn’t want to cause him any more distress than she had to.
“All right, Jes,” she said calmly, “You can let them in, now.”
He stared at her a moment, then bowed his head shallowly. She hid her sigh of relief: the next few minutes were bound to be interesting enough without Jes running amok. Alinath slipped around them all without a look and stood in front of Bandor.
“Is it true,” she said, “is he better now? Is he unharmed?”
Seraph raised an eyebrow and looked at Hennea, who had collapsed against the wall. She nodded.
“He’ll be all right,” Seraph said. “Give him a while to recover and he’ll be all right.”
Alinath’s mouth trembled and she took one more step until she stood against her husband, looking small and frail. “Bandor,” she said. “Bandor.”
Karadoc, leaning heavily on his staff, looked closely at Jes. “Ellevanal favors you, boy, though you never come to his temple; that told me there was more to you than it appeared. I didn’t expect quite this much more. Some of your mother’s magic in you, eh, that kept us from coming in?”
“Yes,” agreed Seraph. “Jes is more than he appears.”
“Traveler,” Karadoc said sternly, as if reminded of his duty. “Traveler, what happened here?”
“Shadows and magic, priest,” she said. “Volis and Bandor were shadow-touched. If I had known that the priest could be cured, I would have—” she remembered the satisfaction of stopping him with her knife and stopped, saying merely, “I was ill-informed.”
“How did you know they were shadowed?” The old man, she thought, was playing the stern priest role to the hilt. It was a good sign. If he’d been frightened by all the magic, he wouldn’t be taking the time to perform for his audience; he’d be getting the rest of the Council Elders.
“She found me tonight as Bandor left me,” said Alinath, as she and Lehr helped Bandor sit on the floor. “Bruised and bound. I told her that there was something wrong with him, a bile of jealousy toward my brother after all these years.” There was a pause, then she said, “I don’t know what exactly he did, but he had a hand in my brother’s death.”
She sat beside her husband and raised her chin in a familiar gesture. “I have never approved of the choices my brother has made,” she said. “I have no use for magic or Seraph. You know as much, Karadoc. I would never take her side against my Bandor. But I know that Bandor, if he were h
imself, would never hit me. He would never have made himself slave to another’s will as he has enslaved himself to that false priest.” She spat out the words. “If Seraph says that he was shadow-taken… well, I for one have to agree with her.”
No one, thought Seraph with secret amusement, could miss how much it bothered Alinath to agree with Seraph.
Karadoc nodded formally. “Accepted.” He grinned at Seraph, transforming in an instant from sour old man to mischievous gnome. “You should know that Alinath came to me several days ago—concerned with the oddities of her husband’s behavior. I told her to keep watch, for as we all know, those of us who live in the lee of Shadow’s Fall have always to be on guard against such.”
He shook his head, “But of course we’ll have to tell a different story to everyone else or Seraph won’t be able to stay here, and no one will really believe that he was cleansed.”
Bandor was huddled against his wife, bowing his forehead to touch the top of her shoulder. Seraph could hear his soft, half-coherent apologies.
Karadoc leaned on his staff. “Let me tell you what happened tonight. Volis is an evil mage, not a real priest. He needed a death to feed some dark magic and chose Rinnie, because he thought she was without protection. Her father is dead—”
“Actually,” said Lehr. “Probably not. That’s what Mother and I were doing when Rinnie was taken. We walked up to the place where the huntsman thought he found Father’s remains. The bones weren’t Father’s. We think a group of human mages surprised Papa and took him.”
“Alive,” said Alinath. “Tier is alive?”
“Alive?” asked Rinnie, grabbing Jes’s hand in a tight grip.
“I think so,” said Seraph.
“Ah,” said Karadoc, “then Volis was one of a group of corrupt mages who helped him in his evil doings. He was responsible for a number of terrible happenings, Tier’s disappearance… oh, I’ll think of a few more things. I’m sure someone had a pet die in the last month or so. Volis has been watching your farm with his magic—”
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