“I’m not going to hurt him,” she told him, though she wasn’t at all sure of that.
“There’s not much that will hurt me at this point,” murmured Kissel unexpectedly, with the subtle humor that he liked to employ. He always seemed best pleased when his audience wasn’t quite certain he was trying to be funny.
“I’m glad to hear it,” she told him, though she wasn’t at all sure he was still conscious.
She tried to remember what Brewydd had done when she had been repairing Tier’s injuries—but she’d been distracted and hadn’t paid much attention to the Healer.
“Lehr?”
He sat on his heels beside her. “What do you need, Mother?”
“Did you ever watch Brewydd heal?”
“She’s a Lark, Mother,” said Lehr. “Can Ravens heal, too?”
Seraph held up her hand so he could see the ring she wore. “I’m a Lark today, too. But I need your help.”
“The Lark rings don’t work,” said Jes. “You and Hennea need to clean it first.”
Seraph turned to look at him. “Willon killed Mehalla to steal her Order, Jes. All those years ago. Something in this ring knows me, and I believe it means that this was once Mehalla’s.” She paused. “We need me to be a Lark today, but even if the gem contained nothing but the Order, I could not use it to become a Lark—any more than Volis was a Raven when he wore a Raven’s gem. I need to see if the person, Mehalla or not, who haunts this ring will help me be a Lark, just for today.”
“Try putting your hand on his wound,” Lehr suggested. “We’re going to have to take off the bandage.”
“Wait, let me do it,” said Tier. “I’ve a little experience at field dressings.”
He sat beside Seraph and cut through the cloth that held the pad over the wound. Then he tugged gently on the padding.
“The pad is stuck down, but not badly—because he’s still losing blood. That would be bad if we didn’t have a Healer.” He smiled at Seraph. “As it is, it makes it easier to get the pad off—but you need to get your hands over that wound. Lark or no Lark, the boy’s got to have some blood in him if he’s to live. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
He took the pad off and, as he’d indicated, the wound began to ooze blood. She put her hand over the wound and sealed it with the palm of her hand.
Everyone waited, even Seraph, but nothing happened.
“Try visualizing the healing,” Hennea suggested. “Think of Kissel well and whole.”
She tried and felt her magic stir, but magic could not heal. She could have used it to bandage the wound though, and would if she could not heal him—but he was so pale, and there had been so much blood. If it came down to making do with magic rather than healing, she suspected that he would die.
“Hennea has part of it right,” Lehr said. “But this isn’t magic. I think, from watching you and Hennea, that being a Raven must involve a lot of thought. But Hunting is almost instinctive for me. I look, then I see the trail. I don’t have to think much about it. Jes gets upset, and the temperature anywhere near him drops to freezing. Papa starts singing, and people stop whatever they are doing to listen. Just let your body do the work.”
Seraph closed her eyes and tried to relax, but the more she tried not to think, the more she thought.
Tier got up, but she didn’t look to see what he was doing. He was back in a moment and began playing his lute. He picked one of her favorite songs, an evening song that had lulled their children to sleep when they were teething or sick. The husky, soft tones slid over her and soothed the tension from her neck and shoulders. She let his voice coax her away from the blood and danger and back into their home and evenings when, with the work of the day done, she and Tier would sit on the back porch. Gura’s wire coat tickled Seraph’s bare feet as the setting sun colored the mountains red.
As she relaxed something stirred at the tips of her fingers, a whisper at first. She coaxed it with a breath of interest just like she’d have puffed at a reluctant spark when she was trying to light a fire the solsenti way.
“He’s stopped breathing.”
Toarsen’s voice, thick with grief.
But when she would have paid attention to him, Tier’s song brought her back to her little spark of . . . healing. See, she coaxed, directing it to the flesh under her fingers. I have something for you to do.
Fire shot up her shoulders so unexpectedly that she jerked and gasped, but someone’s hands locked on her wrists and held her hands against Kissel. She opened her eyes and knew the damage Ielian’s knife had done, though it was buried under her hands and beneath Kissel’s skin.
The power of the Lark eased through Seraph’s hands and into Kissel’s body, repairing the gross damage to the tissues first, then moving on to smaller things. His heart had stopped, but her power hit it and it could not resist her and began beating.
There isn’t enough blood, Mother. He won’t live without more blood.
“Who said that?” asked Jes.
“Said what?” Lehr whispered. “Keep your voice down, Jes, you’ll distract her.”
Mehalla? Seraph asked, uncertain whether that soft voice had been real or imaginary. There was no answer.
Whoever it had been, she had been right. Kissel needed blood the Lark could not supply him with.
But Seraph wasn’t a Lark, or at least, not only a Lark. Leaving her right hand, the hand with the Lark’s ring to cover the closed hole in Kissel’s chest, she brought her left hand, covered with Kissel’s blood, to her lips and touched it with her tongue.
She called her magic to hand. Find this, she told it, showing it Kissel’s blood. Her magic took the dried blood from the bandages, from her hands, from Kissel’s bloody clothes. She touched her tongue again. Make it like this. The dried, dead blood became clean and alive again. Put it here. The part of her that was Lark found the collapsing blood vessels and showed the magic where it needed to be.
Seraph took a shuddering breath. “Let go,” she told Lehr, who held her wrists in a bruising grip. “He doesn’t need me anymore.”
Lehr released her, and she pulled her hands away. Kissel’s chest looked as though the wound was weeks old. She was a little disappointed that there was a mark at all, but remembering Brewydd’s insistence that Tier’s knees heal the last bit on their own, she thought that perhaps it was just as well.
Kissel opened his eyes. “I don’t think I’ll be up and fighting today,” Kissel told Seraph. “But maybe tomorrow.” He tried to sit up, but didn’t quite make it. Toarsen caught his head before it hit the ground. “Then again,” Kissel said weakly, “maybe next week or the week after that.”
“You’ll do,” said Tier, breaking off his singing.
“Thank you,” whispered Toarsen, and there were tears in his eyes.
“I told you I wouldn’t lose anyone else to that bastard,” she said coolly.
“Where’d all the blood go?” asked Rinnie.
Seraph patted Kissel’s bare shoulder. “Back where it belongs,” she said. “Let’s try Gura.”
Gura was at once both easier to heal and more difficult: easier because she knew how to call upon the ring now, more difficult because she was tiring, and there was more damage. Ielian had broken Gura’s ribs and completely severed a muscle in his shoulder.
She was deep into the final connections that the Lark knew would allow the dog to control his leg as well as he had before it was injured when someone spoke to her.
“Seraph?”
It took her a moment to pull far enough out of the healing to know that it was Tier.
“Seraph, Hinnum has come back.” Tier’s voice was soft but urgent. “Can you help him?”
Seraph looked up and saw Hennea on her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks, holding a limp black and white bird in her hands. “Seraph?” she said.
Seraph stumbled to her feet and Tier put his arm around her until she steadied. She knelt beside Hennea and put her hands on the magpie.
&
nbsp; She felt the Lark’s power wash over the bird, but like oil repels water, the healing washed over him without touching him. She tried again.
This time she noticed the differences between him and Kissel. Age and magic entwined his body and kept her from healing him. She saw that it would be difficult to heal a solsenti mage because of the alteration that magic, without the filter of the Raven’s Order, worked on a mage’s body. She understood how it was that a strong solsenti mage would live for many years beyond a normal life span as magic reinforced aging flesh, ligaments, and bone.
“He is too old, and magic too deep in him to allow for healing,” Seraph said, stricken. “I can do nothing.”
Hennea smoothed his feathers and crooned to him. Bright eyes dulled, and Seraph could feel the exact moment his heart ceased beating.
Darkness approached, and Seraph looked up in alarm, but it was only her son. The Guardian crouched behind Hennea and wrapped his arms around her as she wept.
“Jes couldn’t be here,” he told her. “But I can.”
The magpie’s shape fell away and in Hennea’s lap was a child who looked to be no more than four years old.
“Ah my poor Hinnum,” Hennea whispered. “How cruel was this? Such a price you paid for magic, my friend.” She looked at Seraph. “When he was three centuries old he stopped aging and began to get younger. It was good, until he began getting too young. When I last saw him he looked as though he was Rinnie’s age—he found it humiliating.” She looked at the toddler in her arms. “He would have hated this.”
“He was a great wizard and the world is lessened by his death,” said Seraph.
“He was the greatest mage who ever lived,” Hennea’s voice was thick with grief. “I was the Raven, and I never dreamed what power an illusionist could wield. He could work other magics, but illusion was the heart of him. He took the point for the spell to sacrifice Colossae because I no longer had the power to do so. Fifty Ravens would not equal his power.”
“When this is over,” said Tier, “you’ll tell me his story, and I’ll sing it so that his fame will never die. He died protecting my children, he died trying to defeat the Shadowed. Such a man deserves to be remembered.”
“I remember him,” Hennea murmured. “I remember him.”
“He’ll be coming soon,” said Lehr.
“If he did this to Hinnum,” said Hennea, “then we have no chance.”
“He could kill us without our ever seeing him,” said Phoran. “He stopped the breath in my body. If Rinnie hadn’t startled him, I’d be dead.”
“He hasn’t gotten what he wants yet,” said Tier.
“The gems?” Seraph shook her head. “Without Hinnum to guard the library, all he needs is to read through the books. He’ll discover what he needs.”
“You’re Ravens.” Tier got to his feet. “You don’t need the kind of study that a wizard does who is learning new magic. The Willon I know is meticulous. He’d never just jump in and try something new. He’s a merchant, a successful one. He’ll think of negotiating for what he wants before he’ll try it himself. He still has the advantage. It would have simplified things to have Rinnie with him. But he doesn’t need to do it that way.”
He walked over to the horses and unsaddled Skew. Taking the blanket, he unfolded it, shook it out carefully, and brought it to Hennea.
“This is covered in the sweat and hair of a humble and faithful servant. It is not the silk Hinnum deserves, but I think it is not entirely unsuitable.”
Who but Tier could make an old horse blanket seem a fitting shroud for Hinnum of Colossae? Seraph blinked back her own tears. She hadn’t known Hinnum long—but she’d known of him all of her life. Wetness struck her face, and she looked up to see the skies dark with heavy rain clouds, as if they, too, were mourning the death of the old mage.
Tier laid the blanket on the cobbles and took Hinnum’s body from Hennea’s unwilling arms. He set the small form in the middle of the brightly colored blanket and wrapped him in it. Picking him up, he carried the small bundle to the side of the road. There was a house with a small yard with a bush. Tier hid the body behind it.
“We’ll keep him out of sight,” he said. “Let Willon wonder if he will be coming back to help again. Hennea, I think Lehr is right. Willon will rest up a little, but it won’t be long before he comes. You need to teach me how to pronounce the name of the Elder god.”
“We have to hurry.” Seraph stood up. “Hennea, Hinnum gave his life to give us this chance.”
She waited until Hennea was coaching Tier, one syllable at a time so as not to attract the god’s attention prematurely, before going to Phoran. He sat, with Toarsen and Kissel, leaning against one of the buildings that fronted the small winding street. Rinnie was sitting next to him, as she usually was. They all looked half-asleep.
Lehr crouched next to Phoran on the balls of his feet, talking quietly with Phoran. He broke off as soon as he heard her approach.
“You can be used against us, too,” she told Phoran. “And you are defenseless against a Shadowed. I want you to stay where you are. Don’t draw attention to yourselves if you can help it. I don’t know if we can protect you—and I’d rather never have to find out.”
Phoran shook his head. “Willon doesn’t know you.”
She’d expected arguments—in her experience men didn’t like to be told they were helpless. Phoran’s remark didn’t seem to have much bearing on what she’d said.
“Of course he does,” she answered. “For twenty years we have lived in the same town.”
Phoran smiled, the sweet smile that doubtless had seen him through more trouble than any ten children. “Yes, but he doesn’t know you. He knows a quiet, cold woman, commanding and strong, who cares for nothing except for Tier and her family.”
“And?”
“The woman he thinks he knows would never put her family in danger. Not for an emperor, and certainly not for his guards.” The smile widened, and his tired eyes lit up. “And he’d be right—except that you don’t see us as an emperor and his guards. I saw your face when we told you Rufort was dead—but Willon didn’t. He won’t know you care about us at all because he cares for no one. He won’t try and use us as hostages.”
Then he did something utterly unexpected. He stood up, brushed off his pant legs, and took two steps forward, bowed low, until his mouth was level with her face, and kissed both of her cheeks. “He thinks Tier is soft, and you are hard—and he’s wrong on both counts.”
She could feel the flush that rose under her skin.
“We know you,” he said. “But he doesn’t.”
“Well,” she said, flustered, and was almost grateful for Jes’s low, rumbling warning.
“He’s coming,” said Lehr, standing up. “I feel it, too, Jes. He’s not trying to hide from us.”
“Just keep low,” she told them. She held out her hand for Rinnie. “We need you with us,” she told her. “Come, Lehr.”
At Hennea’s direction, they stood in a rough semicircle with Tier in the center. As Willon strolled into view, Seraph tightened her hands on Rinnie and Lehr. She saw Jes take Hennea’s hand, and, finally, Hennea and Tier held hands. As soon as they did so, Seraph felt it happen. Just as Hennea had told her it would, a connection snapped between her and the other five Ordered who stood in front of the Shadowed. In so much, the Lark ring allowed her to stand in for their missing Order.
“I mean you no harm,” said Willon, stopping a dozen feet from them. He was young, Seraph saw, with dark hair tied at the nape of his neck. There was a bruise on his forehead, and he moved stiffly: Seraph took pleasure in knowing he had not come out of the battle with Hinnum unwounded.
“Tier,” he said. “You are a Bard, you know I speak the truth. I’ve never wanted to hurt you. I only need your wife to fix the Ordered gems so that they will work for me—or, better still, give them to me and show me how it is done. I’ll leave you in peace until the end of your children’s children’s days—my word on it.�
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“We are Travelers,” said Lehr, in a growl that sounded as if it could have come from his brother’s mouth. “We cannot let the Shadowed go free.”
Willon threw up his hands. “The Shadowed, the Shadowed. The Shadowed died five centuries ago, a fool who was trying only to stay alive, and so he drained the life from everything else. Killing all those he cared about to preserve what was worthless without them. I am not like that. Tier, you know me. I wouldn’t do something like that. I enjoy a challenge, Tier, I enjoy a song in the evening. I’m not like the Shadowed King.”
“Perhaps not yet,” said Hennea. “But he wasn’t always the Unnamed King either. He was a good man who worried for his people. He saw a way to ensure that his kingdom would prosper.”
“He killed them,” said Willon. “He destroyed his kingdom. I would never hurt anyone.”
“Tell that to Rufort,” said Rinnie.
Seraph squeezed her hand hard. She did not want the first attack to settle on her daughter.
“Your guardsman and the dog were killed by Ielian. I did not command their death.”
“Colbern,” said Jes, in a voice so soft and low it beat upon Seraph’s ears like far-off thunder. “A whole town died to feed you.”
“They were nothing,” he said. “No one I knew. No one you knew.”
Seraph felt Lehr take a breath, and this time he received her warning squeeze.
“What of Mehalla?” asked Seraph. “My daughter, whom you killed.”
The affability fell off Willon’s face as if wiped by a cloth. For a moment his expression was entirely blank. He started to say something—a lie, because he stopped when he glanced at Tier. “Mehalla was a mistake,” he said.
“I don’t think so.” Seraph kept her voice soft and pleasant. “I think you killed my daughter, watched her die for almost a year, then came to my home and told us how sorry you were for her death.”
“You will be sorry for her death,” said Tier. “For her death and for all the dead you have caused since you became the Shadowed. When you take the Stalker’s power, Willon, you become evil.”
Raven s Strike Page 40
