The Raven Ring

by Patricia C. Wrede

  “What are you going to do when you find them?” Daner asked. “Release them?”

  The shapeshifter hesitated. “I’m not a fool,” he said at last. “I would never unbind a Shadow-born I could not control.”

  A shiver ran down Eleret’s spine, and she remembered the Mage of Flames calling fire, and more fire, until the flames consumed everything, including himself. He thinks he’s found a way to control a Shadow-born. Once he has the ring, he’ll unbind one, and try. And fail—nobody can control a Shadow-born. And then there’ll be a Shadow-born loose in the world…

  “I’m glad to hear that you aren’t a fool,” Daner said dryly. “Eleret, he’s going to—”

  “I know. I’m not a fool, either.” She looked at the shapeshifter. “You were wrong, and you were right. I believe what you said, but I won’t give you the ring. Not for that. No Cilhar would.”

  The shapeshifter turned his head toward her. “Then I’ll have to take it.”

  As the shapeshifter’s eyes left him, Daner moved forward with the swift, practiced grace of a swordsman closing on an opponent. He was not swift enough, or else the distance was too great. Before he reached striking distance, the shapeshifter turned and snapped a single word.

  Something chuckled again, the same chuckle Eleret had heard from the Shadow-Mage card during Climeral’s charting, and from the corners of the room, the darkness surged forward. Daner gasped, and his movements slowed, as if he were wading through knee-deep mud. “Nor hanri darvaria,” he repeated for the third time.

  The darkness retreated fractionally, but Daner’s progress remained impossibly slow. “Eleret! I can’t hold this for long.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” the shapeshifter said in tones of detached interest. “It will be interesting to see how much difference your spells make. Last time, it only took a few minutes to kill, but last time there was only the ring to keep it at bay.”

  He killed Ma. Eleret took an involuntary step and discovered that she, too, had been slowed to a crawl. Apparently the ring could only handle one spell at a time.

  “Of course, it was my own fault,” the shapeshifter continued. “I wasn’t using the full strength of the spell then, so I expected it to take hours to work through the ring’s defenses. I thought I’d arrive just as it took effect, but… If she hadn’t died so quickly, I’d have had the ring, and all this would be unnecessary.”

  Eleret froze. In her memory, Climeral’s voice said, …but a direct effort of will could shut the spell off temporarily, and suddenly she was positive that she knew what had happened. Ma called for the healers and then shut off the ring, so that by the time he got there, her things were sealed up to send home. She must have figured out what he wanted, the way I figured it out, and that was the only way she could be sure he wouldn’t get hold of the ring.

  “She must have been weaker than I thought,” the shapeshifter finished. “You two are certainly doing better than I expected, though.”

  Again, Climeral’s words came back to her: It will provide you with protection from certain general spells, but a strong, direct attack will wear through in a matter of minutes. How long had it been since the spell had been cast? Eleret forced her feet forward, but her best effort made little progress. She would never reach him in time.

  Her arms were free; she could throw more raven’s-feet, or her knife. But while the shapeshifter’s warding spell stopped them in midair, throwing things would be useless. Unless she threw the right thing.

  On the card, the painted raven’s wings began to move. The bird cawed once and beat the air with its wings, then stretched and soared higher on some invisible current of air. The mountains and everything in them fell away below it, until all that surrounded the raven was clear air and a sense of release. Release…

  Eleret stared at the raven ring. Climeral said it could disrupt shadow magic, but it might be destroyed in the process. And it was Mother’s. He killed her for it. He’ll use it to free the Shadow-born. I can’t give it to him. I can’t take the risk. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have lost everything Mother fought for. And if it does work, I’ll lose the ring anyway. I can’t do it. No Cilhar could.

  Her own thought reverberated in her mind. No Cilhar could. No Cilhar would. Ma was Cilhar, she spent her life fighting, she taught me the old tales. She couldn’t stop fighting. She couldn’t let go of the ring—but she could die for it.

  She glanced up. Daner’s face was shiny with perspiration, but he had managed another step. The shapeshifter watched his efforts with the air of a drill captain observing a raw recruit at weapons practice. In the corners of the room, the shadows had thickened, swallowing the light. Eleret winced. I’m not Ma. And if I don’t try now, it will be too late.

  The shapeshifter turned and looked at her out of Karvonen’s eyes, and renewed rage swept Eleret’s doubts aside. “You want my ring?” she said. “Take it.” She pulled it from her finger and tossed it underhand in a high arc.

  “Eleret, no!” Daner said, but the ring was already in the air, a gleam of silver in the dimming half-light. Take this, too, Eleret thought, from me and Ma. And threw her mother’s knife after the ring.

  The shapeshifter s eyes widened in an expression of puzzled surprise, and then the ring struck his chest, unslowed by his spell of warding. His hands came up and caught it in automatic reflex—and abruptly the light in the room brightened.

  The shapeshifter’s cry of astonished dismay changed—first to a scream of pain as four razor-sharp raven’s-feet struck his face, then to a cry of agony as lightning exploded inside his closed hands, then to a choked gurgle as Eleret’s knife, Tamm’s knife, buried itself hilt-deep in his throat.

  Eleret stumbled forward as the force holding her back vanished. Before she could reach him, Daner’s sword slid over the shapeshifter’s charred, half-raised arm and into his chest.

  Karvonen’s features blurred—no, his whole form blurred and altered, stretching and twisting his clothes, until it was no longer Karvonen’s shape bleeding and choking in front of them, but Mobrellan’s. His dying hands clenched convulsively around the remains of the raven ring, and he toppled.

  As the shapeshifter fell, the last of the unnatural shadows fled, leaving only the normal variation of light and shade. An instant later, the door burst open and half a dozen soldiers with drawn swords charged into the room. The swords glimmered faintly with the light of some protective spell, and so did the soldiers’ breastplates. Eleret smiled faintly. Commander Weziral would be a good man to serve under.

  “My lord!” one of the men said to Daner. “Are you all right?”

  Daner pulled his sword free of the body, turned, and began answering questions. Eleret left it to him; her mind was occupied with other things, and Daner would make a better job of the explanations in any case. The last of her smile faded as she stepped forward to stare down at the shapeshifter.

  She felt no triumph, only relief that she did not have to retrieve her weapons from a body that still resembled Karvonen. If this was her revenge on her mother’s killer, it was not worth having. But it’s more than revenge, she reminded herself. He won’t be after me or any other Cilhar, ever again, and he won’t be letting Shadow-born free to trouble the world. It still did not feel like a victory, only like the absence of defeat. But she could not take the time to ponder now, not while she still was unsure where Karvonen was and what had happened to him.

  Carefully, so as to avoid the spreading pool of blood, she crouched beside the body. The raven ring was a worthless chunk of metal, embedded in the blackened flesh of Mobrellan’s palm. She shuddered and left it there, reaching for one of her raven’s-feet instead.

  “Ah, milady, should you be doing that?” one of the soldiers said.

  Eleret looked up, uncomprehending. “He’s not my first battle kill, by any count. And who should clean my weapons, if I don’t?”

  “Let her be, Captain,” Daner said, and there was a rueful expression lurking at the back of his eyes. “It’s
all right. She’s a Cilhar.”

  “I’ve heard about them,” the soldier muttered, backing away. “Well, if you say so, my lord.”

  Quickly but methodically, Eleret picked her raven’s-feet out of the wreckage of Mobrellan’s face and cleaned them on his shirt—Karvonen’s shirt, actually, but it was ruined in any case and she doubted he’d want it back. Assuming he was still in a condition to care about such things. She shut off the thought and made her fingers work faster. Two of the raven’s-feet had to go into her pouch; when she’d pulled them free, she’d split the thong that held them to her shoulder. Well, that was what the thongs were for. She still had a row and a half at each shoulder, if she needed them again.

  She yanked her knife free and wiped it clean, then rose. As she turned, she heard Daner saying, “—quite definitely the same shapeshifter. I doubt there was more than one, so it’s over.”

  “No it isn’t,” Eleret said. She nodded to Commander Weziral and said, “I’m sorry, Commander, but I’ve a friend in trouble to see to. If you need more explanations, they’ll have to wait.”

  Daner frowned; then his eyes went past her to the shapeshifter’s body and widened slightly, as if he had only just noticed that Mobrellan had been wearing Karvonen’s clothes. “I think the Commander is finished with us,” he said. “Where do we start looking?”

  “Karvonen was going to Jonystra’s room. He was either waylaid there or on his way there; the timing is too close for anything else.” Eleret started purposefully for the door.

  “If it would be any help, Freelady, I could send some men—” Commander Weziral began.

  “Send them to the inn called the Broken Harp,” Eleret said without pausing, and an instant later she was in the hall outside.

  Daner caught up with her halfway down the corridor. Neither of them said anything until they were almost out of the building; then Eleret glanced over at him and said, “Good job.”

  “That last sword-thrust?” Daner shrugged. “It seems to have been unnecessary.”

  “That, yes. Unnecessary or not, it’s best to make sure. And if you hadn’t done whatever you did to stop his magic, I couldn’t have thrown anything—ring or knife—once the ring was off my finger. But that wasn’t what I meant.” Eleret hesitated.

  “Well?” Daner said after a moment. “What did you mean?”

  “This time, you didn’t block my throwing lines.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  WHEN THEY REACHED THE streets, Eleret chose the most direct route to the Broken Harp and set a brisk trail-pace in spite of the crowds. There was no point in trying to track Karvonen through the alleys from the point where they had parted; if he had been waylaid before he reached the inn, the quickest and surest way to find out was to determine that he had never arrived there.

  Daner did not object to her hurry, though he looked as if he would like to. Eleret suspected that he’d have preferred to wait for Weziral’s men to accompany them, but that would have meant another five or ten minutes’ delay while the soldiers were assembled and instructed, and she could not have stood it. She needed work, or action, or perhaps merely movement—something to release the tension she felt, or at least to distract her from it.

  It occurred to her that she had never translated the shapeshifter’s Cilhar “password” for Daner, so, as they crossed the broad avenue toward the area where the inn was located, she did so.

  Daner’s expression went grim. “I wondered what that was about, but when you tapped the ring…”

  “You thought I knew it was the shapeshifter because the ring had warned me?” Eleret shrugged. “It was a reasonable guess. And it really doesn’t matter; the important thing, then, was that you were sure it wasn’t Karvonen.”

  “I wish I knew how Karvonen persuaded him to say something he didn’t understand,” Daner said. Then he closed his mouth abruptly and his expression changed from grim to bleak. “I was going to ask if you were sure you didn’t want to wait for the Commander’s men,” he said after a moment, “but now I don’t think I want to wait for them.”

  “Wait? Why?”

  “That shapeshifter—Mobrellan or whatever his name really is—had a tendency to get other people to do his dirty work for him. If he’s left someone at the inn—”

  “Then we’ll deal with them.”

  They turned the last corner, and Eleret saw the splintered harp above the inn’s door. Her stride lengthened further, even as her stomach clenched. She found herself almost hoping Mobrellan had left someone on guard. With Daner half a step behind her, she pushed open the door of the inn.

  The transition from the near-noon light of the street to the smoky gloom of the public room blinded Eleret to detail for a moment, but she heard a startled exclamation as she entered, and then a muttered “Hoy! Oransk voyi Cilhar,” and the scraping of benches being shoved back from tables.

  “Syaski!” Eleret called the warning to Daner, then drew her knife and moved left, out of the light spilling through the open door. I should have let Daner come in first, she thought. It would have given us another second or two; they couldn’t have identified him as a Cilhar from looking at his clothes.

  Steel rang against leather as Daner drew his sword. Five figures converged on them, their expressions indistinct but their intentions clear. Near the back of the room, the proprietor of the inn pushed his wife into the kitchen, then discreetly followed her out of harm’s way.

  Eleret flipped a raven’s-foot at the nearest Syask, expecting him to dodge. He did, but not far or fast enough. Clutching his left eye, he tripped over a bench and temporarily disappeared from sight.

  One out, four to finish. Eleret dropped into a crouch as the first man came at her. His movements lacked edge—he’s probably been drinking. Stupid thing to do, if you’re expecting a fight—and she closed with him, ducking under his descending sword to slide her knife between his ribs. Two out. As she pulled her knife free, she shoved, hard. The man fell backward into his compatriots, entangling their swords and slowing their advance.

  Backing away, Eleret circled sunwise. Off to her right, she heard the clash of sword against sword. Daner has one. Two left for me. The nearer man turned to face her and found her knife waiting. One for me, one for Daner.

  The last man was ready for her. His sword licked out, and she jumped backward, barely avoiding it. The Syask smiled and lunged again. Eleret took the cut across the fleshy part of her right arm—not deep enough to cut muscle, but painful. Ignoring the pain, she caught at his wrist and pulled him toward her, bringing his throat within reach of the knife in her left hand.

  As she jumped back to avoid the spurt of blood, she heard a strangled cry to her right, and the sound of a body falling. That’s all of them. Automatically, she bent to wipe her knife.

  “Eleret! You—” Daner stopped.

  Looking up, she found him staring at her with an astounded expression. “What is it?”

  “You killed one of them?”

  “No. Two. That one will probably live.” She pointed her knife at the man she had sliced between the ribs. “And the one over there is sure to survive.” She gestured in the direction of the man she had blinded with her raven’s-foot.

  Daner shook his head. “You’re amazing.”

  “Not really. The innkeeper’s in the kitchen; go ask him which room is Jonystra’s. If I ask, he’ll want explanations, but if you do it—”

  “He’ll be happy to tell Lord Daner Vallaniri whatever he wants to know.” Daner was heading for the kitchen door before he was quite through speaking.

  Eleret finished cleaning her knife and sheathed it, then pressed her hand against the sword cut for a moment to reduce the bleeding. By the time she had retrieved her raven’s-foot, Daner was back. “First door on the left, upstairs,” he said, then, “You’re hurt!”

  “Not enough to matter.” The cut was messy and needed bandaging, but though it continued to ooze, the bleeding was not bad enough to worry about weakness or blood loss. A few more mi
nutes would make little difference in its eventual healing.

  “I begin to understand Karvonen’s attitude toward Cilhar,” Daner muttered. “A few minutes won’t—”

  “—make enough difference to be worth the time,” Eleret said from the far door. “Be quiet. There may be more of them upstairs.”

  “I think they already know we’re here,” Daner said, glancing pointedly back at the overturned bench, the two injured Syaski, and the three bodies.

  “Probably, but they don’t need to know to the second when we’re coming through the door.”

  Without waiting to see whether Daner was following, she started up the stairs. She moved quickly and quietly, as she did when she hunted in the forests at home, her ears straining to catch any whisper of sound that might betray the presence of enemies above. In the hall by Jonystra’s room she paused, suddenly reluctant to face whatever waited inside. Her slight hesitation allowed Daner to catch up with her. At his inquiring look, she whispered, “Spells?” and gestured at the door.

  Daner’s eyes narrowed and he muttered something indistinct. Then he shook his head. Eleret took a deep breath, nodded once, and pushed open the door.

  No Syaski burst out to attack them. What she could see of the room was empty, save for a wash table very like the one in the room she had had downstairs. Eleret frowned; then, dagger ready, she leaped through the open door and whirled, scanning the room. No one crouched against a wall or lurked behind the door. Satisfied, she sheathed her dagger and looked around more carefully.

  Two wooden trunks sat against the wall beside the door, each closed with an iron lock. The bed was in complete disarray; the blankets had been pulled off and dumped in a heap on the floor beside it, leaving the straw pallet bare. No, not pulled off, dragged. And even half-blocked by the pile of blankets, there was something odd about the shadow under the bed… Stepping forward, Eleret jerked the straw pallet off the bed, and found herself staring through the rope webbing into Karvonen’s terrified eyes.