“You know it’s true what he said,” panted her young friend Kissel.
“What’s that?” she managed, dropping another Raptor who was raising his sword to attack a blue-robed man from behind.
“A man would be smarter to face an enraged boar than to cross my wife.” The boy managed to imitate Tier’s style.
“Huh,” she grunted, kicking an unsuspecting man behind his knee and dropping him onto his opponent’s blade. “How flattering.”
The boy grinned wearily. “He doesn’t seem to mind.”
“Can you see him yet?”
“No,” he said. “But I can see Toarsen on the stage—he’ll do his best to keep him from harm.”
Tier knew that he should get to his feet and claim a sword, but he just couldn’t manage it.
As if he read his mind, Toarsen said, “It’s all right, sir. Just having Avar in here fighting for the Emperor took most of the heart out of the Raptors. All the Passerines called out his name as soon as they saw who it was—even that squid you’ve had Kissel and me watching was attacking the Raptors. Remind me never to let him behind me with something sharp. All that’s left now is just a few of the Raptors and mercenaries who didn’t leave fast enough. Avar will call quarter in a minute, as soon as he thinks that his men have had enough of killing.”
Sure enough, through the sounds of battle—all the louder for being inside the cavernous chamber—came a bass rumble still distinguishable as the words: “Quarter give quarter! Surrender or die!” picking up in volume as more voices took up the cry.
“Waste of time,” murmured Tier, just before he passed out. “They’re all guilty of treason—Phoran will have to hang ’em all.”
He wasn’t actually out all that long because there were still clashes, as a few desperate men continued to fight, when he woke up.
He opened his eyes just as an old, quavering voice said, “Woo-eyah. I see that those giggling twits were right about solsenti men.”
Tier stared at the oldest woman he’d ever seen, then grinned. “You must be Brewydd,” he said, “the Healer.”
“And it’s a good thing for you, young man,” she agreed. “You must be the Bard that woman’s been so upset about. Now let me see what this old biddy can do about making you want to stay with the living.”
She clicked her tongue against her teeth when she saw what they’d done to his knees. “Good thing you did this with a Lark nearby,” she said. “If you’d done it somewhere else you wouldn’t be walking on these again.”
“I’d give you a kiss,” said Tier, then he had to stop and grit his teeth as her touch brought burning pain that was worse than the original blows had been. “Except that my wife would finish what the Path began.”
“It is good that a man knows his place,” said Seraph comfortably from somewhere behind him.
He hurt too much to turn so he could see her, so he gave her a vague wave.
She crouched down on her heels beside him. “So,” she said, “I know where there is a white robe you can have—but that might make you a target. On the other hand, parading around in nothing at all might make you a different sort of target.”
He laughed, then moaned. “Why is it that the first thing someone does when you’ve cracked your ribs is make a joke?”
“You don’t have cracked ribs,” said the Healer, looking up from his battered knees. “You have broken ones. And hold off on that robe, girl, until I see to them as well. He doesn’t have anything that I haven’t seen better.”
“Hello,” said a Traveler, crouching down on Tier’s other side. “You must be the Bard.”
“Tier,” said Seraph, “this is Kors. Kors, my husband, Tier. Kors, what do you want?”
Ah, thought Tier contentedly, all that in under a breath, my Seraph at her charismatic best.
“We were wondering if you’d seen the Guardian? We know he was here, but none of us can locate him.”
“Most all of what I’ve seen is a bunch of people from the knees down,” quipped Tier. Then he added, “Actually I saw him—or at least something that was probably him, whispering to Phoran. I suppose he was telling Phoran that Avar was waiting as planned because it was just after that that Phoran signaled the Ravens to bring down the wall.”
“I didn’t see it,” said Seraph sourly. “I was trying to get down to you and I got caught in the crowd. Hennea brought down the wall by herself—I didn’t even get to singe that bloody wizard to ash. By the time I got in the clear, all of the Masters were down and dead—or at least not moving.”
“Well,” said Kors, clearing his throat a little, “that’s kind of why Benroln sent me over to see if you could find your son. A lot of us saw something kill the Masters, one after the other, but we couldn’t quite see it. We’d all appreciate it if you could find Jes and make certain he doesn’t mistake anyone else for the enemy.”
“Jes isn’t that stupid,” said Tier. But he worried about what all the violence had done to the Guardian, too. “He’s probably gone off to find someplace quiet.”
“Wait until I’ve gotten the ribs stabilized, young man,” chided the Healer, moving creakily from his knee to his side—pushing Kors out of the way. “And then you can go looking for your boy.”
It took more than a few minutes, but finally with Lehr under one shoulder and Toarsen under the other, Tier gained his feet, Seraph’s robe stopping a few inches below his knees. The joints in question still felt like they’d been hit with a club—which they had—but at least he was able to shuffle over to take a look at the victims.
His first clue was the rather sick look Phoran sent him before he turned back to talking with Avar.
They’d piled all the Masters’ bodies together. When Tier arrived, Kors and Kissel hauled one of the bodies out and pulled back the cowl. The dark veil that lined it, making the robes a more effective disguise, had been ripped so that the face could be revealed.
Tier had the boys help lower him until he was sitting on the ground. The sight he had out of his good eye was getting worse, and he supposed it would be swollen all the way shut by tomorrow, but he wanted to see them, to know that they were dead.
Tier’s first reaction was a dull sort of surprise. He’d never actually seen any of the Master’s faces except for Telleridge’s, but somehow he felt as if he ought to recognize them anyway. He didn’t even know which one it was. His second was a realization that the dried, sunken look was due to more than age. Almost hidden on the man’s neck were two fading puncture wounds.
“The Travelers tell us that your son is capable of this,” said Avar as he and Phoran approached. “And that he has magic that can make him hard to see—much like what they saw kill these men.”
Tier opened his mouth, then saw Phoran’s pale face behind Avar and realized what had killed the wizards. “Must have been him, then,” he said, trying to hide the rush of relief. Jes hadn’t been running amok—the Memory had.
Lehr stiffened, and Seraph put a hand on Tier’s shoulder. He patted her hand, then Lehr’s leg. “Do the rest of them look the same?”
“Yes,” said Phoran. “Just the same. As if they’d been drained.”
“Work of the Guardian,” said the Healer briskly. Tier hadn’t realized she’d followed them. “Work of the Guardian to protect his own. Get that man up off the floor and don’t put him down until he’s somewhere he can rest comfortably. Do you have a chamber where we can store him overnight?” She asked the last question of Phoran.
He bowed. “I suspect that the one that he’s been occupying will be the easiest for him. He’s welcome to take as long as necessary—and as soon as he’s up to it, I’d be happy to find him better accommodations.”
Brewydd looked at Seraph. “You wanted to burn him to ash, girl, do it now. It’s not a good thing to leave wizard’s bodies intact,” she said.
Lehr and Toarsen managed to lever Tier up once more. Seraph waved a hand and the bodies of the Masters burst into a dark blue-white flame that consumed them utterly
in a moment. She gave Tier a look that told him that he’d better have a good reason to put Jes in a position that would make it even more difficult for others to accept him.
“Let’s get him back to his cell,” she said. “Then Lehr can hunt Jes down and bring him to us there.”
The trip down that short hallway was miserable. Halfway there, Lehr exchanged a look with Toarsen, and with his help, shifted Tier until Lehr could pick him up and carry him the rest of the way.
Seraph sent Toarsen off to help Avar with a kiss on his cheek, ignoring Tier’s indignant “Hey.”
When Toarsen was gone, she said to Lehr, “Doubtless your father will explain why he blamed Jes for that nasty business. So just find your brother and bring him back here so Tier can explain it to Jes, too, before he gets hurt by the reception he gets.”
The Healer had accompanied them, and she checked Tier over thoroughly to make sure the mending she’d done on him would hold. When she was through she patted him on the shoulder.
“Hardest thing that a Healer learns is when to stop healing,” she said. “There’s always a price to pay. You’re going to be very tired in a short period of time, and you’ll spend the next few days more asleep than awake. So you’d better tell me quickly why you’re blaming that poor lad for the work of a Memory.”
Seraph drew in her breath. “A Memory?”
“Can’t,” said Tier. “Promised.”
“Promised what?” asked Phoran, slipping into the room and shutting the door behind him.
“Not to explain why he’d want his son to bear the blame for deaths caused by a Raven’s Memory,” said the old Healer sourly. She took another look at Phoran. “You have the signs of being afflicted by a Memory, boy.”
Seraph raised an eyebrow, but cleared her throat. “Emperor,” she reminded Brewydd.
“When you’re as old as I am,” said Brewydd. “You can call anyone anything.”
Phoran smiled. “It’s my Memory,” he said. “It’s all right, Tier. Go to sleep, I’ll tell them.”
The Emperor patted the end of the bed and found a safe place to sit. He spoke quietly and told them how the Memory came to be bound to him. At some point in the story, Tier drifted off.
“They were guarded,” said Brewydd, after Phoran finished his story. “It couldn’t take them. In the normal course of things, unable to feed, it would have just drifted away. But you were there.” She nodded her head. “I’ve heard of something like that happening. The Memory attaching itself to the wrong person. As long as it gave something back, its victim will continue to live. What did it give you?”
“Answers to my questions,” said Phoran. “That’s how I found Tier.”
“Why was it able to kill the Masters now?” asked Seraph. She was touched by the way that Phoran kept patting Tier’s feet.
“They were draining themselves trying to control the Passerines and fight our wizards,” explained Brewydd. “I expect that weakened the protections that kept the Memory from killing them before.”
“It will leave Phoran in peace, then?” asked Seraph.
“If it has accomplished its task it should,” said the old woman. “I suppose your son will understand that the life of an emperor who just might be what this Empire needs is worth a little discomfort. Tell your man to try not to make anyone mad enough to hit him in those knees again and he’ll be right as rain in a month or so. I’d better go back and see if my services are needed elsewhere.”
Phoran got up reluctantly. “I suppose I’d better go as well—before some idiot thinks I’m lost.”
“I’ll be fine,” Tier said faintly. “Go reassure the idiots.”
Phoran was laughing as he left. Seraph shut the door and took Phoran’s place on the end of the bed.
“Is there anyway I can lay down beside you that won’t make it worse?” she asked.
“No,” he sighed without opening his eyes. “Come here anyway.”
When she was tucked against him, he buried his face in her hair.
“Telleridge killed Myrceria in front of me,” he said. “He’d had her tortured, but she didn’t tell him anything. Telleridge didn’t know about you.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Seraph said, hurting for him and for the woman she’d met only briefly.
“How do you know that?” he whispered, because he needed to believe she was right.
“Because if you could have done anything, you would have. It’s all right, Tier.”
“He was her father, and he tortured her and killed her,” said Tier. “And he enjoyed doing it. Was he shadowed?”
“Can’t people be evil on their own?” she asked with a sigh. “You’ll have to ask your sons; Ravens can’t see shadowing—but I think so. Shh,” she said. “I love you. She did, too.”
She let him hold her while he cried quietly into her hair until the tiredness of being healed overwhelmed him. Then, between one breath and the next he slept.
Seraph awoke from a doze to a light knock on the door. Carefully, she extracted herself so Tier slept on undisturbed.
Lehr and Jes waited out in the hall. Seraph motioned them out, went out herself, and shut the door so they wouldn’t disturb Tier.
“I told him what Papa said,” said Lehr. “Jes said he didn’t kill anyone.”
Seraph looked up and down the hall and quietly explained.
“It’s fine, Mother,” said the Guardian. “No one will be much more afraid of me than they already are.”
“Mother,” said Lehr, “You need to hear why Jes left the Eyrie.”
“I was following a black-robed wizard,” said the Guardian. “Father was right, all the wizards were tainted. But there was one… did you see him, Lehr?”
“No,” Lehr said. “I only saw the five wizards the Memory killed.”
“There was one who left when the wall disintegrated. He wasn’t just tainted, Mother, he was the taint itself.”
“Like the Unnamed King?”
The Guardian nodded. “I didn’t see the taint at first, Mother. I followed the wizard out of the room and into the halls on the other side of the wall. Before I could get close, the Memory was there. It touched the wizard.” The Guardian flinched. “I don’t know what the Memory did, but it felt as if a veil had been pulled away and revealed the wizard for what he really was.” He took a shaky breath. “Jes is very brave, Mother, even I don’t scare him—but what hid beneath the wizard’s illusionary veil was evil. The wizard hit the Memory with some kind of magic, and the Memory was just gone. The wizard didn’t see us. When it left, we didn’t follow.”
“Good,” said Seraph, reassuringly. “You did the right thing.”
“When I caught up with him,” said Lehr, “he showed me where the man had gone—and I couldn’t find his trail. Mother, I could see where rats had been running down the hall, but I couldn’t pick up his tracks.”
Seraph touched Lehr’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” she said and hoped it was true.
CHAPTER 17
If it hadn’t been for Skew, Tier would have had to wait another week before setting out for Redern, but the old horse’s soft gaits were easy on Tier’s ribs. He seemed to understand that Tier was hurt: not even Gura’s anxious weaving in and out around his legs caused Skew to alter his smooth stride.
If he remembered to breathe shallowly, it didn’t even hurt too much—but he didn’t like to do that, because it only increased the number of Seraph’s anxious glances. She had wanted to wait, but he needed to get home to Redern—needed to have all of his children together where he could protect them.
There was another Shadowed who walked the land.
There were other explanations for all that had passed. He wasn’t certain if even Seraph really believed it in the light of day—but the Healer knew. She hadn’t said anything, but he could see in her eyes that she believed.
Tier glanced over at the brightly colored cart that Brewydd rode in. It was her voice, he thought, that had made Benroln insist on
accompanying them back. Benroln had said that Phoran would do better without Traveler aid now that the Sept of Gerant was there.
Doubtless Benroln was right about that. The Sept of Gerant had said as much when he’d come to see Tier off in lieu of the Emperor. The political situation was unstable and Phoran clung to the throne primarily because there were so few of imperial blood around to fight him for the Empire. Phoran had wished him good travels in secret the night before they’d left.
“I like your Gerant,” said Seraph. “He reminds me of Ciro, a little. Quiet and unassuming until his skill is called upon.”
Tier smiled down at his wife who walked at his stirrup as if she were afraid he’d fall out of the saddle. “He liked you as well. Told me that I’d made a good exchange when I chose to follow you instead of the sword.”
“He laughed when you told him you were a farmer,” she said.
Tier glanced at her sharply, but her face was tilted down, watching the ground.
“Not this year,” he said. “But with the money Phoran sent us back with we’ll be able to survive this year and buy another horse to replace Frost for next planting season.”
“You don’t think we’ll be planting next season either,” she said softly, her hand coming up to grip his calf.
He shook his head, then realized that she wasn’t watching him. “No,” he said.
She took a step closer to Skew, until her shoulder pressed against his leg. “I don’t know what awaits us, but I don’t think the Stalker is through with us yet.”
Jes laughed, and Tier glanced up to see the Traveler Raven Hennea stalk away from his son. He’d thought at first that she was younger than Seraph until he’d gotten a good look at her eyes. When he’d asked Seraph, she’d told him she didn’t know how old Hennea was either. Ravens seldom lived as long as Larks, but it could be very difficult to tell how old they were.
He’d worried until he’d seen how she watched Jes when she thought no one was watching. He knew what love looked like.
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