“Illusion?” said Seraph, dismounting. “It doesn’t have that feel, though there is some magic here, right enough.”
She touched the gates, then jumped back as they began to open. Not swinging inward or outward as the city gates of most places did; nor did they rise up like the smaller gates of a keep or hold. These slid back on oiled tracks set below the road surface and into the walls themselves until the only remnant of the gate was a handspan-wide bar of brass up the middle of the wall edge.
A wagon length in front of them was another wall wider than the gate, that blocked them from the city so people entering would have to go to the left or the right of it. On either side of it, set between the city walls and the inner wall were two wooden gates of the sort a farmer might use to keep livestock in or out. One was open, the other shut.
Tier dismounted and crouched beside the brass door’s track, bending down to sniff. “If this is an illusion, it’s on par with the mermora,” Tier said. “This oil smells fresh.”
“There are people here,” said Kissel. He loosened his sword and tipped his head from side to side, loosening his neck muscles in preparation for battle. “This can’t be a deserted place. Not looking like this.” He pointed at the dirt just the far side of the gate and Hennea saw what he had—there were lines on the ground as if someone had just finished raking the ground clear of debris.
“It’s too quiet,” protested Toarsen. “A city is never this silent, Kissel. Not even a city the size of Leheigh. You can hear the sounds of Taela miles away.”
“It’s magic,” said Jes quietly. “The city was left this way. That’s what the Guardian says.”
“He’s been here?” Tier gave his son a surprised look.
Hennea was startled as well. She knew the Guardian had been remembering things he should not have known, not if the Order had been cleansed after the death of the previous Guardian who bore it. She’d started to believe that might be most of the trouble with the Guardian Order.
If so, then when she and Seraph solved the mystery of what to do with the Ordered gems, they might also stumble upon a way to help make the Guardian Order less dangerous to its bearer. Not that she wanted to change Jes or the Guardian, just keep him safe. But if the Guardian knew about Colossae, then it wasn’t just bits of the previous bearer that the Order contained—it was the first one, one of the survivors of the death of Colossae.
Jes stared determinedly down at the ground for long enough that she thought he’d not answer Tier’s question. Finally, he said, “He doesn’t know. He just remembers that the wizards left the city as it was.”
“Let’s go in,” said Phoran, with all the impatience of a young man, reminding Hennea that, for all his cleverness, he was only a few years older than Jes. “Let’s see what this wizards’ city looks like.”
Tier got to his feet and stared at the rake marks before he nodded. “All right. Loosen your swords, boys, those of you who have them. Be alert. Remember that according to Traveler stories there is something evil here. It may be bound, but the Travelers didn’t trust those bindings.”
Jes didn’t wait for the others but went to the closed gate and jumped over it; his dog followed him. Seraph led her horse through the open gate.
Hennea hung back. Let Jes and Seraph see to the front guard, she would take the rear. There were other people thinking about safety, too. She noticed Toarsen rode in front of Phoran and Kissel behind. Since Rinnie was riding next to Phoran as usual, that left the most vulnerable of their group well guarded from physical harm. Rufort and Ielian looked at her, and she waved them through ahead of her.
Lehr waited.
“Go ahead,” she told him.
He smiled. “I’m not telling Jes I let his lady take rear guard.”
She stiffened. “I can protect myself.”
“Doubtless,” he agreed, and held his chestnut mare where she was.
She smiled and shook her head, but urged her gelding through the gate ahead of him anyway.
The narrow passage dumped them in a large plaza cobbled in the same reddish stone as the walls. Water puddled in the spaces between the cobbles and splashed under the horses’ hooves.
In the small houses that crowded together around the plaza and continued to line narrow streets were some of the signs of age Hennea had expected when they’d approached the city. The wood of the doors and windows was cracked, and weeds poked up here and there around the houses. Roofs looked as though they were decades beyond where they had first needed rethatching. Decades, though, not ten centuries.
By the time Hennea and Lehr arrived, everyone else had dismounted and was looking around.
“It still doesn’t look deserted enough,” said Phoran, rubbing his stallion’s neck absently. “There are places in Taela that look worse than this.”
“And it doesn’t smell,” agreed Toarsen.
Lehr hopped off his horse as well and wandered over to one of the houses. “I can’t get the door open,” he said in surprise.
“Is it locked?” asked Tier, going to see.
Hennea dismounted slowly, still waiting for some danger or attack. The vast emptiness of the city gave her chills.
“I tried that. I can feel locks, and there are none here, Papa,” Lehr said. “It just won’t open.”
Hennea bent down to look at weeds growing along the edge of the wall between them and the gate. A raindrop fell on a leaf, joining a puddle that had formed there. The weed was knee high and fragile-looking, but it didn’t bend at all under the weight of the rain. It didn’t move.
She reached out to touch it, and it didn’t give under the weight of her finger either, even when she pressed down on it.
“Try the window up there,” she heard Phoran say to Lehr. “It’s got an open-air window.”
She glanced behind her and saw Lehr jump to catch the lintel of a window and chin himself up. He dropped back down after a moment. “There’s a curtain across, but it feels more like a wall.”
“I know what’s wrong with your door and the window,” she said, standing up and looking around the streets again. When she knew what she was looking for it was obvious. The thatch on the houses was dark and grey with age, but not with rain. The wood of the walls of the houses was not wet either—and none of the horses were nibbling at the weeds.
Seraph frowned at her.
“The Elder Wizards somehow froze the city in time,” said Hennea certain that she was right, though she could barely feel a trace of magic. “Everything is exactly as it was the day the Elder Wizards sacrificed it. You’ll have to find an open entrance if you want inside these buildings because there isn’t a door that will open or a curtain that you can move.”
They spent a while exploring the little square. None of them seemed to feel the way Hennea did about the city—except for Gura, who whined and settled in the middle of the square with his muzzle on his paws. It made him sad, too. She left Jes and Lehr trying to figure out how to get across a small yard full of grass time-stiffened to sharp spikes so they could take a closer look at a shed with an open door.
Seraph had taken the map satchel under the overhang of a building for protection from the rain. When she saw Hennea wander back toward the square, she called her over.
“You’re the only one who can read this,” she said, handing Hennea the city map. “Can you figure out where we are and how to get somewhere that might do us some good?”
Hennea took the map and looked at it. “The gate said ‘Low Gate,’ so we must be here.” She pointed. “It calls this area Old Town.”
“I’d have thought they’d build first on top of the ridge,” said Seraph, distracted from her original question.
Hennea looked around again and saw, not the dilapidated buildings, but how they once had been built against the solid wall of cliff face that curved around them protectively.
“They might have wanted to be near their fields,” Hennea said. “Or maybe the oldest sections had been on top, but were razed and built over.
”
Seraph grinned at her, an expression Hennea still wasn’t used to seeing on the face of a Raven—but Seraph herself admitted that she didn’t have the control she ought. It didn’t seem to hamper her—much, thought Hennea, remembering the table that had slammed the floor when Ielian had made Seraph too angry.
Seraph’s expressions tended to be sudden, breaking out of the cold reserve that should have been a Raven’s calm like the sun from a storm cloud or lava from a volcano, then gone just as quickly as they had come.
“Tier will make up stories for us,” she said, then lost her grin, and, at first Hennea thought it was because she’d remembered that Tier had quit telling stories or singing.
But then she said, “Tier?” and thrust the maps at Hennea.
Hennea looked over at Tier, who stood near his horse looking at nothing, his face as empty as any she’d ever seen. Hennea shoved the map back in the case and set it on the dry ground beneath the overhang before following Seraph. Not that there was anything she could do to help.
He’d been having this kind of episode a couple of times a day. Nothing as dramatic as the thrashing fit he’d had a few days before they’d come to Shadow’s Fall, but frightening even so.
“Tier?” Seraph’s quiet voice was pitched so as not to disturb the happy explorations the boys were pursuing. Jes, Hennea saw, looked up anyway.
Seraph touched Tier’s arm. “Tier?”
Gradually, personality leaked back into his face, and he blinked, looking slightly surprised. “Seraph, where did you come from? I thought you were looking at maps with Hennea?”
Seraph smiled as if there were nothing wrong. “This is Old Town, Hennea says. These buildings were already old when the city died.”
Tier must have seen something in her face Hennea had missed because he touched her cheek, and said gently, “I did it again, didn’t I? That’s the second time today.”
Third, thought Hennea, but she didn’t correct him.
“Let’s look at the map and see if we can find the library,” he said, when Seraph didn’t speak. “If we’re here looking for information in a wizards’ city, the library is the place to start.” He looked up at Hennea. “Can you read the city map well enough to tell us how to get there?”
There was nothing in his face except for cheerful interest. Brave, Hennea thought. She cleared her throat and answered from memory. “It’s in the north center of the city. Several miles away, if the map is to scale. Let me go look at it and find the shortest path there.”
If she hadn’t summoned them to continue through the city, Seraph thought that the others would have been content to spend the rest of the day exploring Old Town. But, once she’d caught their attention they were happy enough to mount up and set off to look for the library instead.
The horses’ hooves rang unnaturally loud on the cobbles, the sound echoing off the buildings that rose around them. As they got farther from the gate, the houses grew larger and more elaborate, some as large as the richest of the merchants in Taela, and, for the first time, Seraph saw the green pottery-tiled roofs that she recognized from the mermori.
On one street where all the houses were built wall to wall, there was an empty place where a building should have been. As they got closer to it, Seraph could see that not only was a building missing, but there was a hole half a story deep filled with the crumbled bones of a building. Seraph could see the marks on the walls where a roof had once touched on either side of the hole.
“It’s as if, in this one place, the magic didn’t protect this building, though the ones on either side are fine,” Hennea said. “These ruins are what the whole city should have looked like.”
They found other holes in the perfect preservation, places where buildings should have been but were no more. Sometimes there was nothing except bare earth, other places they could see stone foundations or piles of rubble.
“Papa, look. It’s an owl.” Rinnie said, pointing down a narrow side street that ended at the base of an open building made of granite. A pillar stood before the center of the building, in front of the door. On top of the pillar was an oversized carving of an owl, its wings half-furled, as if any moment it would take off in flight.
Unable or unwilling to miss the call of curiosity, Tier turned Skew down the street.
A few moments more or less would make little difference, Seraph told herself. Even if they found the library and managed to get into it—something not as promising after their troubles with the buildings they’d tried to explore so far—it might take months before she found what she was looking for. Years.
Tier wouldn’t have years. Maybe not even months.
She kept her face blank and rode after the others, reminding herself, a little desperately, that Brewydd had believed something here could help them.
“The door’s not closed,” announced Lehr, who’d taken the lead. He disappeared into the building before Seraph could caution him.
Seraph dismounted.
“Leave the horses,” suggested Tier, though Lehr had already done so. “Skew, Cornsilk, and Blade will all stand, and the other horses won’t leave them.”
He offered his hand to Seraph and escorted her up the half flight of stairs and through the double doors. Despite her worries, she found herself hurrying, eager to see the inside of one of the buildings here at last.
Mosaic tiles of vibrant colors covered the floor of a cavernous room. Great, sweeping arches lifted a ceiling far above them. There was light coming in from somewhere, and Seraph searched for a while before she saw how it had been done. Shaded by yellow glass, glowing stones cast their light as brightly as the sun had ever shone through an open window.
“It’s a temple,” said Tier, when no one else found words to speak.
“I don’t know anything about Colossae’s gods,” Seraph said. “None of the books in the mermori talk about them.” But all of the mermori books she’d read were about magic. They gave little insight into the lives of the wizards who had written them.
“Look over there.” Tier nodded toward the far side of the room, and she followed his gaze. She’d been too dazzled by the lights and color to notice the raised dais on the far side of the room. On the dais was a statue.
“She looks as though she might breathe,” said Phoran, striding across the room and bounding up the steps until he could touch the robes of the goddess caught in stone, then painted with such attention to detail that Seraph almost expected the fabric to move.
Phoran’s head just reached the goddess’s knee. Above him she rose, bare from the waist up. Her skirts, painted bright blue with green-and-yellow geometric patterns, were caught in a belt at her hip—the belt clasp was in the shape of an owl. In one hand she held a small harp, the other hand was stretched out toward the room.
Her hair, very nearly the color of Seraph’s own, was cut short, and either some quirk of accident or the subtlety of the artist made the fine strands look like the hairs of a feather. But it was her face that really drew Seraph’s attention. The artist had depicted her with a gamine grin so full of life Seraph had to fight the urge to smile in return.
“The goddess of music,” said Hennea. “Kassiah the Owl.”
Seraph turned to look at the other Raven because she’d sounded a little tense. “How do you know that?”
“It’s written on her belt.” Hennea sounded like her usual self again, and Seraph could read nothing in her peaceful mien.
“I always wondered why the Bardic Order was the owl rather than a songbird—like a lark or canary,” said Tier.
“It still doesn’t really explain it,” said Lehr after a moment. “I mean, why does she have an owl rather than a songbird?” He ran his fingers over the stone of her skirts. “I like her.”
“She’s dead,” said Hennea. “It doesn’t matter whether you like her or not.”
Tier frowned at her. “I thought Travelers didn’t have any gods.”
“Travelers don’t,” said Seraph. “But it looks
like the Elder Wizards did. I wonder why they left them behind?”
“Dead gods don’t need believers,” Hennea said tightly.
Seraph frowned at Hennea’s odd agitation—she wasn’t the only one who noticed. Jes, who’d been wandering around the room, turned abruptly and strode across the room to Hennea.
“It happened a long time ago,” he said. “Don’t be angry.”
Hennea closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again she’d regained her usual air of peacefulness. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why this should . . .” Her voice trailed off as her gaze crossed Tier’s. “You’re right, Jes. It’s stupid to get upset about something that happened so long ago. Let’s let the past lie behind us, where it belongs. It’s just this city. It’s so empty.” She took a deep breath. “We need to find the library and see if we can get in.”
There were no sounds but the ones they made, none of the smells that Seraph associated with human habitation: beer brewing, bread baking, smoky incense mingling with the less pleasant smells of sweat, sewage, and rotting food. That was not to say that there were no smells, but they were the wrong smells.
The former inhabitants of Colossae hadn’t bothered with a small zigzag path up the cliffs like the Rederni. Instead they’d built a giant ramp. Seraph, looking up the gradual slope of the ramp marveled silently at the wealth that would allow such construction.
Though at first everyone had been pointing out the wonders of the city, they’d all eventually fallen silent. Not even the massive ramp, cobbled with rough-surfaced stones that gave hooves good purchase on the climb and must have required replacing on a regular bases, drew comment. Overwhelmed, she thought.
But she wasn’t here as a tourist. She let her eyes return to Tier, who was talking with Phoran. She’d have to put her faith in Brewydd’s foresight and believe that there were answers here.
Raven s Strike Page 26
