Raven's Strike (30 page)

“Let Tier take charge, follow where you sh—could lead? You are the Emperor.”

“Sometimes being Emperor is tiring,” Phoran answered, then he grinned. “And it's always safer to let the Ravens go first into a wizards' library.” He smiled at Ielian. “It's all right. They know who I am. I don't have to enforce protocol among my friends.”

The others had taken the central stairway, so Phoran followed them leaving Ielian to trail behind him. The stairs went up only a single flight to a room that was as impressive as the entryway had not been. The ceiling, far above, was covered with decoratively shaped skylights, which illuminated the huge room.

The library in the palace at Taela held five thousand volumes and was accounted the largest library in the Empire. Phoran estimated that this room alone held ten times that number. The entirety of the walls was covered in bookcases, mostly filled with books, and ladders and narrow walkways spiderwebbed around the walls to provide access to the shelves. On the floor of the room were more bookcases, set so closely together there was scarcely room to pass between them.

Only a small section of the room near the stairway they'd entered by was free of bookcases. Instead, a number of small tables were set up so that library patrons could take the books and read them on padded benches and a couple of carved chairs.

Seraph was holding on to Tier with obvious dismay.

“It appears that we'll be staying here for a while,” Tier said, sounding mildly amused.

Phoran, bending over to rub Gura's belly, noticed that they were all leaving muddy tracks on the polished floor.

“Let's leave this for today,” said Tier, glancing around. “The map shows another of the city gates on the other side of this building. I'd like to set up camp while it's still light.”

“Why not stay in here where it's dry?” asked Ielian.

“No,” said Hennea.

“No,” said Lehr. “No one has brought back stories of an empty city, not in all the centuries this has waited here. Perhaps it's not because no one ever found it—but because no one ever left it.”

“We'll camp outside of the city,” said Tier. “We might as well go now and pick a good site since it looks like we'll be here for a while.”

The University Gate was located just where the map had promised. After Lehr's little speech in the library, Phoran was relieved when the brass gate, like the one they'd used to enter the city, opened at the first touch.

In the end, a campsite wasn't difficult to find. There was a small pond fed by a creek not a quarter mile from the gate. The ground was free of rock, and there was grazing for the horses. Best of all, sometime while they had been in the library, it had stopped raining.

“We'll set up a permanent camp, here,” said Tier, in satisfied tones. “Tomorrow we'll see about building a few corrals so we don't have to worry about the horses. And a shelter or two to keep the rain off our heads.”

“Except for Hennea and me.” Seraph had already started to pull the packs off her little mountain horse. “We'll go to the library while you set up camp.”

“Not alone,” said Jes.

Seraph turned to her oldest son and raised a cool eyebrow, and Phoran was caught between being thankful her look wasn't turned on
him
and wishing he could use that expression on encroaching Septs—but he'd never managed to learn to raise a single eyebrow, and he didn't think the expression would look quite the same with both eyebrows raised. Doubtless he would just look surprised.

“Do not forget who and what I am, Jes,” Seraph said icily. “There are weapons other than swords.”

Tier cleared his throat. “We'll need you at camp, Jes. I'm going to send you and Lehr out hunting. If your mother can kill a troll, I'm certain she can handle a library.”

That night, after the rest of them were sleeping, Phoran found himself restless for no reason he could determine. He set aside his blankets and pulled his boots on. Jes opened his eyes, then closed them again as Phoran walked past him. Toarsen and Kissel were both fast asleep, and he stepped lightly around them because they, unlike Jes, would not have just let him walk off alone.

There was a little rise to the land fifty yards from camp, and he walked in that direction. When he topped the rise, the Memory was there waiting for him.

It was darker than the night and taller than he was. Its oddly gracile form bent down, and thin wisps of something strong wrapped around his wrist.

His sleeves were loose, so it had no trouble pushing one of them up and exposing the inside of his elbow. Phoran hissed as the Memory's fangs sank deep. He'd forgotten how cold it was, forgotten how much it hurt.

When it had finished with him, he sank to the ground and held his arm cradled to his chest.

“By the taking of your blood, I owe you one answer. Choose your question.” The sexless whisper was no less frightening now than it had been the first time it spoke to him.

“Who is the Shadowed?” Phoran asked.

“He that gives his soul and spirit for power and eternal life. The Hungry One.”

“I know that, that's not what I meant, and you know it,” Phoran snapped. It would be useless to protest. He should have found a better way to frame his question. There was always tomorrow. He closed his eyes against the dull, consuming ache in his arm. “Give me a name.”

“I give you all the answer I have,” it said, and faded into the night.

C
HAPTER
14

Ielian walked beside Lehr, his bow on his shoulder. It was still barely light, and the air was chill.

When they were out of sight and sound of the camp, Ielian asked, “Why me? Why not Jes or Rufort?” Either of them knew twice what he did about hunting.

“You don't do so badly,” said Lehr, and Ielian took his words for the compliment they were. “Jes is still fretting because Mother and Hennea intend to go to the library on their own today. If I took him, like as not I'd turn around, and he'd be gone. He's done it before. If there's danger about, you can always count on my brother—but if it is just work, he gets distracted pretty easily. Toarsen and Kissel won't leave Phoran—and Papa needs too much help in camp for me to take all three of them.”

“And Rufort?”

“Rufort is a fine hunter, but he takes no enjoyment from it.” Lehr grinned suddenly. “Besides, Papa can use a strong back more than we can.”

“What are we hunting today?”

“I thought we'd find a nice fat deer,” Lehr said. “Since we'll be here a while, we can take time to preserve the meat.”

Farther from Colossae the trees began to grow closer together, forming a sparse forest.

“I have a question,” Ielian said.

“What is that?”

“Your mother talks about six Orders—and I was taught there are only five.”

Lehr laughed. “I'd forgotten that. There are Falcon, Raven, Owl, Cormorant, Lark, and Eagle. The one you wouldn't have heard of is Eagle. Mother says that Travelers don't talk about them much, not even among themselves. Never to outsiders.” His face grew somber. “The Eagle—the Guardian—is different, more difficult to bear.”

“Your mother calls Jes, Guardian, sometimes.”

Lehr nodded. “Jes is Eagle.”

“He's . . .” Ielian tried to come up with a polite way to say it and failed.

“Slow?” Lehr offered. “He can seem that way sometimes. Mother says that he's not always paying attention, that he's always carrying on a running conversation with the Guardian half of himself. The Colossae wizards created the Orders, and I guess they didn't do the Eagle Order correctly. The Eagle is supposed to protect his clan—Jes can be pretty awesome in a fight.”

“I saw him the night the Path fell,” said Ielian.

“Then you know—ah, here's what I've been looking for. There's been a deer past here recently. Time to start the hunt.”

“Let's explore the rest of the building before we start on this room,” Seraph told Hennea, surveying the main room of the library. At least she hoped it was the main room. It would take them a long time to look through, and she didn't want to find any bigger rooms. “Wizards are a secretive lot. If they were working on something new, it might be in some obscure corner of the library, either high up or down in the basement.”

Hennea pursed her lips. “If we're looking for something about the Orders, it won't be in bound books anyway. Otherwise, we'd have found
something
in the
mermori
libraries. It will be in parchments or handsewn notebooks of some sort. Maybe in a laboratory or work area.”

“I'm glad I'm not a
solsenti
wizard,” Seraph said. “I don't have the temperament to draw endless runes and mix potions in a laboratory. So, do we stay together or split up?”

“It'll take half the time to look if we split up,” Hennea said, then she smiled. “Of course, if you are worried about being alone . . .”

Seraph snorted.

Hours later, Seraph was feeling as frustrated as any
solsenti
wizard.

She'd been right about the kinds of places wizards liked, and the section of the library that she'd found abounded in such places, small alcoves that were obviously private studies, laboratories with shelves full of jars and baskets of spell components, and slightly larger rooms where two or three wizards might have worked together. She'd walked leagues of mazelike halls that twisted and turned, with unexpected stairways and half stairways.

Everything as perfectly preserved as it must have been the day that they had left. She could not conceive of the power that had taken.

“You were here weren't you, Isolde?” Seraph murmured to herself as she walked through yet another narrow twisting hallway. “I wonder what you saw and where you were going? Did you know what they were doing, those great wizards who created the Stalker? Were you one of them, or did you protest futilely?”

She trailed a hand on the wall until she came to another door. The room was mostly empty, though it still smelled of some sort of incense or tobacco.

“I wonder where the Stalker is,” she mused. “And why neither my Falcon nor my Eagle feels it anywhere.” It hadn't struck her as odd until just that minute. Her sons could feel shadowing and, less reliably, the Shadowed, but they hadn't said anything about the Stalker at all.

There was a small desk and a chair on one end of the room. Someone had carved two letters in the wood of the desk. Remembering the scolding she'd given Jes and Lehr for carving their initials into the floorboards at home when they were about Rinnie's age, she smiled.

Some young person had sat here,
she thought, brushing her hands over the chair, but keeping a lock on her talent for reading objects because she didn't know how the wizard's preservation
spells would affect it. That didn't stop her from speculating. A student had been sent here to work, perhaps, and had taken his eating knife and carved his initials here instead, finding a kind of immortality in the act.
Look,
he said,
I was here, I left my mark.

She stepped out of the room and shut the door gently.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” said a male voice in softly accented Common.

Seraph spun on her heel and stared at the young man who stood in the hallway behind her.

Except for his clothes, he looked every inch a Traveler. Silvery blond hair, not two shades off her own, hung to his shoulders, where it wasn't caught up in beaded braids. His eyes were a pale, pale grey, and he looked only a little older than Rinnie. He was naked except for a wraparound kilt of bright colors secured with a plain brown belt. Even his feet were bare.

“Who are you?” she asked, centering herself in case she needed her magic.

His small polite smile widened a bit, and he ducked his head without dropping her gaze. “You may call me Scholar. May I help you find what you need?”

Only then, when the first shock of fright had passed did she realize what her senses had been trying to tell her: this was not a human.

“Illusion,” she said, reaching out to touch him lightly. His skin was soft, warm, and gave beneath her touch as if he had been a real boy and not a magical construct. The magic felt very familiar—just like the
mermori
. “Hinnum made you.”

“Indeed,” he answered her politely. She found it impossible to look at the illusion and not designate him as male, though she knew it was foolish. “May I help you find something? You seem to be searching.”

“I need to find out about the Orders,” she told him. “My husband's has been damaged, and I need to repair it.”

“You have many Orders,” the Scholar said neutrally.

“I am Raven,” Seraph said confused.

“You carry many Orders.”

Her hand went to the bag where the gems the Path had created lay. How had an illusionary construct sensed them? She narrowed her eyes at him. “I do. There have been many Travelers killed, and their Orders bound to gemstones so that
solsenti
wizards could use them. I have them here. I hope that if I find out enough to help my husband, then I can see these Orders are properly released as well.”

The boy said nothing, just waited in silence. His small smile was unchanged, and she suspected that she'd been mistaken when she'd thought it had widened earlier.

“Why were you left here?” she asked him.

“I am here to help others find information from the library.”

“You know what information is stored here?” Seraph felt a stirring of excited hope that the first sight of the library full of books had extinguished. If she and Hennea had to sort through the books for ones they could decipher, then read them, Tier would die of old age before they finished.

“I know what is in the library,” he answered.

“Good,” she said. “Do you know where Hennea is? My friend who came in here with me?”

This time the answer didn't come immediately. “I know where the Raven is,” he said at last.

“Take me there,” she said. This was better than a notebook full of the scribblings of wizards.

Hennea had chosen to explore the basement. They found her seated at a table, a magelight hanging over a loose-bound sheaf of papers. Her hair was mussed, as if she'd spent time crawling under tables.

“Raven,” said the Scholar, before Seraph could announce them. “You are welcome here.”

Hennea marked her place with a finger and looked up with an expression of mild inquiry. She didn't look at all surprised to find a stranger addressing her. Seraph had never admired her aplomb more.

“This is the Scholar,” Seraph said, wondering if Hennea would see what she had seen.

Hennea frowned and set the papers aside, shifting her weight in her chair as she stared at him. “You look familiar,” she said at last.

“No,” Seraph corrected her gently. “He feels familiar.”

Hennea straightened. “Hinnum,” she said.

“The Scholar is here to help people find information.” Seraph smiled. “Phoran said that wizards tend to be very well organized.”

The Scholar led them back to the main room, the first room they'd been in. “This is a good place to start,” he told them. “What would you know?”

“Tell us about the Stalker,” asked Hennea.

He bowed shallowly. “Pray have a seat, Raven.”

He was talking to Hennea as if he no longer noticed Seraph was in the room, his eyes locked on Hennea's face. As she sat on the cushioned bench beside Hennea, Seraph wondered if it was some aspect of his creation that he paid attention only to the one who questioned him.

“There were once two brothers, twins born of the Eastern Star and fathered by the Moon. They were mirror images of each other, the light twin and the dark. We called them the Weaver and the Stalker, though those were not their names.”

“Why not call them by name?” asked Hennea.

“Do you know this story?”

“No.” But Hennea frowned and rubbed her forehead as if she were trying to recall something.

“I've never heard of the Weaver,” said Seraph. “Only the Stalker.”

“Names have power.” The Scholar's voice was as polite and even as his small smile. Seraph was finding that the Scholar's expression, which had first been almost welcoming, was starting to make her uncomfortable.

He continued in that same quiet voice. “To speak the names of the twins is to call their attention to you, and it should not be done lightly.”

When neither Seraph nor Hennea commented, he continued. “The Weaver held the power of creation. Whenever he spoke a word or had a thought, he created. The Stalker held the keys of destruction. Whatsoever the Weaver created, the Stalker numbered its days so the Weaver's creations did not grow to such an extent that the All of Being was made to Nothingness.”

“I remember that,” said Hennea. Her hands were on her temples as if they ached. “I remember that. If creation was given no limit, ultimately everything would cease to exist.”

The Scholar's focus on Hennea was starting to bother Seraph. Though his expression never changed, his body leaned
toward her, just a little. Seraph could see no magic passing from him to Hennea, but she watched him closely.

“One day the Stalker was walking when he came upon a woman washing her clothes. She was more beautiful to him than any other thing his brother had ever made, and so he took her to wife.

“While he had her the Stalker was the happiest of men, but, since she was his brother's creation, her days were numbered from her birth. When she was an old, old woman, the Stalker went to his brother and pleaded that the Weaver would break the power of destruction, the Stalker's own magic, that she might not die.

“But this was something the Weaver could not do. If he broke this power, then he would destroy them both. Because for the All that Is to exist, the power of creation can never overwhelm destruction.

“Since the Weaver had not saved her, his most perfect creation, the Stalker vowed that all of the Weaver's creations would be destroyed. But he stayed his hand while his wife yet lived, because he could not stand to lose her one moment before he had to.

“As she lay dying, his wife gave her husband a drink the Weaver had prepared, and the Stalker fell asleep as the last breath left her mouth.”

It was a romantic story, but the Scholar told it the same dry fashion Jes had used to recite his lessons—perhaps with even a shade less enthusiasm.