Raven s Strike

by Patricia Briggs

  He was looking better—he could hardly look worse without being dead. Watching Phoran half-carry him up the stairs, she’d realized they were running out of time even faster than she’d thought.

  She condensed the story of Colossae and left out as much of the drama as she could—it looked to her as if most of them had had all the excitement they needed for the day. She also left out the part about Hennea and the Raven being one and the same. It sounded as if Hennea, at least, had figured it out. She would check later to make certain Jes knew, too, and she would tell Tier because she didn’t keep secrets from him. Hennea could decide if she wanted to tell anyone else.

  As she spoke, Seraph’s eyes kept trying to linger on Tier. She didn’t use the new seeing spell she’d learned, because it would have taken too much of her concentration, but she looked and tried not to panic at how frail Tier’s Order had grown.

  He knew it was bad, too—she could tell by the lines around his eyes and the too-casual pose. Panicking the others more wouldn’t help anyone, so Seraph didn’t wring her hands or rage, though she wanted to do both. Tomorrow, Hinnum would help them if she had to hold his beloved library hostage. Tier could hold on one more day.

  She finished the story, then gave them Hinnum’s insights into the Shadowed, the Stalker, and the mess the wizards had made with the mermori and the library.

  “So,” said Phoran heavily in the silence that followed. “My uncle was right. They killed their children and saved the books.”

  “To be fair,” said Tier, who was watching Hinnum carefully. A Bard, thought Seraph, had a way of seeing through illusions. “I imagine they were told their families had to die—and no one said anything about the books.” Then he smiled at her. “But that’s not all you learned today, you’re too smug, Empress.”

  Seraph looked at Hinnum. She’d given Hennea the choice to keep her past to herself. Somehow it didn’t seem right not to do the same for the old wizard.

  “Introduce me to your family,” he said.

  “Sir, may I make you known to my husband, Tieragan, Bard of Redern.” She caught Ielian’s frown and realized she should have introduced Phoran first. It was too late to correct that mistake, but she named him next.

  “Emperor?” asked the Scholar.

  Seraph supposed it said something about you when you could shock a wizard as old as Hinnum, even though he’d spent the better part of ten centuries buried in a library. “I forgot to tell you about him,” Seraph said, quickly explaining why the Emperor was a part of their quest. When she finished, she looked around trying to remember who was next in rank for introductions. She gave it up for hopeless and decided settled for age instead.

  When she had named everyone including Gura—at Rinnie’s insistence—she turned to Hinnum, and said, “These are my family. My family, may I make known to you Hinnum, the Illusionist of Colossae.”

  “I thought you said he was an illusion?” said Tier frowning. He stared at Hinnum. “He is not real, Seraph—I can tell that much.”

  “This is an illusion,” Seraph said, waving vaguely at Hinnum’s body. “But the puppet master is Hinnum himself.”

  “You mean he’s alive,” whispered Hennea.

  Seraph saw a rush of feelings that were quickly tucked away behind Hennea’s impenetrable calm. Jes—or the Guardian—pulled Hennea closer to him and watched Hinnum with brooding intensity.

  “Yes,” Seraph told them all. “Hinnum has agreed to help us. He told me that he could definitely help with Tier’s problems and the Order-bound gems.” Though if Hennea had remembered everything, whatever everything was for a Raven who used to be a goddess, they might be dependent upon Hinnum’s help.

  She looked at the old wizard in the young boy’s form. “But it is with the Shadowed he can help the most. You know him, don’t you? He came here a few centuries ago, a young, powerful mage who was searching for someone who could teach him.”

  Hinnum met her eyes, his face impassive.

  “You enjoy teaching,” she said. “I don’t know what his name was then, but we know him as Willon. He’s smart and charming.”

  “He was an illusionist,” Hinnum whispered. “Wizards see illusion as lesser magic—something to fool the eye rather than change the world. To be a great mage, to have so much power and to have the other wizards who could barely scry in water if they were given the Bowl of Ages to do it in snigger with contempt of your abilities is a hard thing. Even in Colossae we were looked down upon—until I showed them all what an illusionist could do.”

  “You taught him,” Tier said, taking over. She left him to it gratefully. He’d know how to pull every last detail out.

  “I did.”

  Tier tilted his head. “I’ll wager you didn’t teach him how to become the Shadowed.”

  “No.”

  “There aren’t any other people here,” said Tier. “Seraph told us that the Shadowed cannot hold the Stalker’s power without death. Whom did he kill?”

  “My other apprentice,” Hinnum said. “I didn’t know at first. I thought they both had left. You aren’t the first to find Colossae. They come, sometimes, when I get too alone. I call them here, teach them, and bind them to silence.”

  “Will you help us bring him to justice? To stop his killing of the Traveler clans? To stop him from stealing the Orders?”

  Seraph saw guilt cross Hinnum’s face. Of course Hinnum was the one who taught Willon how the Orders worked, thought Seraph. Who else would know how to do it?

  “He wanted to know about the wizards,” said Hinnum. “About the gods who died. About the Orders. I didn’t teach him how to take them, he didn’t have that kind of power, then. He asked me about the Travelers.”

  “You didn’t tell him about the Eagle,” said Jes suddenly. “Volis didn’t know about Eagles, and none of the gemstones Hennea and Mother have belong to Eagles.”

  “Of course not,” Hinnum said indignantly. “The Eagles are to be shielded, protected. The burden you bear is difficult and not of your choosing.”

  “He was here, wasn’t he?” asked Lehr. “Didn’t he explore the city? If the Owl and the Raven have temples, didn’t the Eagle?”

  “The Eagle’s temple was razed,” said Hennea. “After they killed the god, they destroyed His temple. Why should they worship a dead god?”

  “Hinnum told us that much,” lied Seraph cheerfully. She wouldn’t let Hennea reveal herself just because she was upset. Hinnum would know that she lied, Hinnum and Tier. Neither of them would tell.

  “Papa,” Jes said. “What would the Shadowed want with the Orders?”

  Tier smiled, and Seraph knew they’d both caught something that she’d missed. “Right, son.” He held Hinnum with his eyes. “I’m not a Raven. Nor yet a Traveler, for all I bear the Owl’s Order. But I am a storyteller.”

  “In the story of the Shadowed it seems there were three people of interest.” Tier held up one finger. “The first is you, who taught an illusionist how to use his power. You did it because you were once as he was, because you were lonely, and because he flattered you.”

  He raised a second finger. “Then we have Willon, who became the Shadowed for power—but I know Willon. He made a fortune as a merchant because he always planned things carefully. He always has a goal in mind. He has kept himself hidden—as opposed to the rather direct approach favored by the Unnamed King, for instance—but we know some things Willon has done. For instance, he had a secret society that purposefully increased the unrest in the Empire and stole the Orders from Order Bearers.”

  “Raven save us, he’s trying to destroy the veil,” said Hinnum with sudden intensity. Then he paled and glanced at Hennea. He cleared his throat. “The purpose of the Orders was twofold. The first was to provide the balance that kept the veil in place. The second was rendered moot by our folly when I saved the library and built the mermori.”

  “What was it?” asked Hennea. “I don’t remember.”

  “The veil keeps the Elder gods from working in o
ur world, but their power must be used. Without an outlet of some sort, eventually the veil would be overcome. So the six gods were made to drain the power of the Stalker and the Weaver. The Orders were to serve the same function, but, because of the imperfection in the veil, the Elder gods’ power seeps out on its own.”

  “The Weaver’s as well?” asked Phoran. It was a good question, thought Seraph. If destruction escaped, why not creation?

  Hinnum crossed his legs and sat on his feet on the cushioned bench. “Let me tell you what I see. A Raven married to a solsenti Bard—and the Orders were tied to the bloodlines of the Colossae wizards. They have three Ordered children, each a different Order. The Orders were to scatter among the Travelers. They travel with the Emperor—who is afflicted with a Raven’s Memory, which, through a strange twist, must kill the Shadowed.” He looked at Hennea, then away. “You are not the first people to find Colossae—but you are the only ones whom I have not called here.”

  “You think that this is the Weaver’s work?” asked Hennea intensely.

  Hinnum nodded. “I do.” He looked at Tier. “You think the Shadowed is going to try to destroy the veil by confining as many Orders as he can to these rings.”

  Tier nodded. “I think that depends upon the third player. The Stalk—” His face went blank.

  Lehr was out of his seat before Seraph really understood what had happened. Jes pulled Tier down off the table and onto the floor. For a moment he lay still, staring blindly up at a skylight.

  Hinnum caught her by an arm before she could go to Tier and jerked her back.

  “There’s no time,” he said urgently. “Seraph, look at his Order—He’s too close to losing it all. It will kill him if he does. You need to work the spell I taught you. Find out how the Shadowed is stealing the Order and stop him.”

  She jerked her arm free and ran to Tier. The boys were holding him down to try to keep him from hurting himself. She saw Hinnum was right; Tier’s Order was almost gone. There was no time to wait until the old wizard could help with this. If Seraph couldn’t find some way to stop the spell, it would be irreversible, and Tier would die of it.

  She stuffed her terror deep, where it would be a source of strength rather than a distraction. Then she called the magic Hinnum had taught her and tried to ascertain what the Shadowed and his minions had done to her husband.

  She’d believed the Shadowed’s spell was simply destroying the connection between Tier and his Order. Now that she could view both spirit and his Order she understood she’d been wrong.

  Each strand of the Shadowed’s spell was cloaked in spirit; a pale gleaming sheath around a darkly-malignant core. Just as she had wrapped her magic in her Order so she could affect Tier’s, so did the Shadowed wrap his spell in spirit. The spirit had hidden the spell from her earlier attempts to discover it. Tendrils of the spell insinuated themselves into the warp and weft of Tier’s order, worked into its fabric as tightly Tier’s own spirit.

  Wrapped in spirit, the spell was able to bind to the Order as Tier’s own spirit did. It had worked deeply into Tier’s order, but where his spirit was passive, the spell was not. The spell wasn’t attacking the connection between Tier and his Order, instead it was ripping it away from Tier by force. The threads of Tier’s spirit were being slowly broken, strand by strand as Shadowed’s spell inexorably rent Tier’s Order from him, leaving severed bits of spirit behind.

  Her old teacher would have considered the spell crude, relying on power rather than finesse. But, however crude the spell, it was working.

  The Shadowed’s spirit-magic twined around the threads it had stolen, forming a rope of magic, spirit and Bardic Order that stretched between Tier and, presumably, whatever gemstone the Path’s Masters had attached his Order to. A small gossamer ribbon Tier’s spirit broke and fell away from the Order, darkening as it did so. It curled down limply against Tier’s body.

  “Seraph? Let me help?”

  It was Hennea. Seraph nodded twice and felt the Raven’s hands close on her shoulders, feeding her power.

  She could have tried to darn Tier’s Order to him again, she could do a better job now because she understood what was needed—but, as before, it would only help him temporarily. Eventually both her magic and Tier’s spirit would fail, and Tier, his spirit damaged beyond healing, would die.

  Instead, with Hennea’s strength to aid her, Seraph threw herself, magic, spirit, and soul down the twisting rope that connected Tier and the Path’s gem. She lost all sense of time and place as she followed the rope, until her journey began to seem endless. Only her fierce determination to find the end of the rope kept her going.

  Then, without warning, she found what she sought, a gem the color of cinnamon. Grey-green strands of Bardic Order formed a tight ball in the center of the stone, with a few stray fragments of Tier’s spirit still woven in it. She had no idea how to retrieve what it had stolen.

  To her magical self, the gem was enormous, but she knew physically it would be small enough to be set in a ring or necklet.

  She could take it, she thought. She held it in her magic now—if she could make herself just a little more physical, she could just steal it from wherever it was and pull it back with her.

  There was danger in what she intended. She might find herself wherever the gem was—and she was in no shape to face the Shadowed alone. Or she could fail to make herself real enough to take the gem and too real to go back to her own body.

  As she hesitated, the cord pulsed and turned, and the ball of Tier’s Order in the gem became just a little bigger.

  She’d never done anything like this before, but all a Raven had to be able to do was conceive of possibilities and let magic fill the patterns she conceptualized. For a moment the stone eluded her, as if it feared her touch, but finally her fingers closed upon it, a power-warm, sharp-edged, and slick-sided garnet.

  It was hers. For a moment she just held it, stunned it had worked. Then she released her hold on her magic, both the seeing spell and the power that had allowed her to follow the Shadowed’s trail. She came back to herself with Tier’s cry in her ears.

  It took her precious moments to realize why the gem warmed until it was hot in her hands, moments while it pulled more of Tier’s Order to it. The gem’s proximity strengthened the effectiveness of the thieving magic.

  “Hold him so he doesn’t hurt himself.” The Scholar’s voice had altered a little, deeper tones added to give weight to his commands.

  Hennea’s hands slid from Seraph’s shoulders and wrapped around her hands instead.

  “Let me ward it, Seraph,” said Hennea.

  Seraph opened her cupped hands and allowed Hennea to touch the gem. A simple warding would have just severed the connection between Tier and the stone, and she was too tired to be clever. Let Hennea work the subtler magic necessary.

  “There is too much of him, spirit and Order already in the gemstone,” Hennea said worriedly, showing she understood as much as Seraph herself did.

  “You can see it?” asked Seraph, then thought, Of course you could. Seraph was still trying to absorb the implications of who and what Hennea had been; possibly Seraph’s slowness had hurt Tier. If she had just let Hennea try—Hennea, who used to be the goddess of magic. Perhaps she could have really unworked the Shadowed’s spell.

  “I followed your magic and remembered.” Hennea released her hold and stepped back. “I couldn’t have done it myself, not until I saw what you had done. What I’ve done to the stone should keep it from hurting Tier more for a while. But it is not a permanent situation. I don’t know how to reverse the Shadowed’s spell.”

  “Neither do I,” admitted Seraph readily as she reached out to touch Tier’s face. “Yet.”

  He opened his eyes at her touch. He smiled at her, then looked at Phoran, who sat on Tier’s legs, and at Jes and Kissel, who were holding his arms.

  “It’s all right, you can let me go,” Tier said. “I’m all right now . . . I think.”

  They l
ooked at Seraph and waited until she nodded before letting Tier go.

  “Last time we thought he was done, too” said Phoran apologetically. “He was quiet for a little while, then went into convulsions again.”

  “I thought you were going to break apart, this time.” Lehr’s voice was taut as he helped his father to stand.

  Tier moved his left shoulder a little gingerly. “Nothing so dramatic—though I might have pulled a muscle or two.” He looked up at Seraph with a smile of ironic amusement. “You did learn something today. I usually feel worse after one of those instead of better. What did you do?”

  Seraph opened her hand, so he could see the gemstone in it. He took the unset, rust-colored garnet from her hand gingerly.

  “They might have chosen a prettier stone,” he quipped, then, seeing Seraph’s face, he gathered her against him, letting her use his shoulder to hide her tears.

  “I almost lost you,” she said. “Almost.”

  “I’m here,” he told her. “I’m right here.”

  She let him comfort her, but she could see the remnants of his fragile Order sway to the tugging of the gem in her hands.

  Phoran eased his way out of the chaos of the general meeting that followed Tier’s almost demise. Rinnie didn’t need him anymore, she was clinging to her father. And Phoran, being neither Traveler nor mage, had nothing he could add to the discussion—which was currently about how to destroy the Shadowed.

  He knew they wouldn’t leave him alone for long, though Toarsen and Kissel had appeared to be thoroughly fascinated at the thought of meeting a wizard who was old before the Empire had even been a twinkle in the eye of the cunning old farmer who had been the first Phoran.

  Phoran welcomed the silence of the old city, outside of the library’s door. A sunset, pale and subdued compared to the ones in Taela, lit the eastern sky.

  He thought he’d grown accustomed to amazing things on the trip—a lonely mountain haunted with the remnants of ghosts, a legendary city frozen in time, a wizard older then the Empire—but Seraph had just proved him wrong.