Raven's Strike (4 page)

It looked like any other well to Tier. A three-sided building, much like a smaller version of the smithy, protected the well from weather and dust. A stout mud-brick wall ringed the wellhead about waist high on Tier. Before they came quite to the well, Jes put his front paws on the lip of the well and growled.

“Good,” said Seraph. “It's there.” She turned to Hennea. “I'll do the fire; you can deal with the mistwight.”

Hennea usually held to her serene mildness under all circumstances, so the edge of fierceness that touched her smile surprised Tier.

“It's always nice to have plans,” she said.

The wall of the well wasn't high, but neither was Seraph. Tier lifted her from the ground to the top of the well wall with a hand on each hip. He steadied her until she was stable with one hand on the post that held up the roof.

She gave him a quick, distracted smile for his help, then looked into the dark hole. Perched flat-footed on the old wall, she had to dip her head a little to avoid hitting the roof.

She was magnificent.

Her moonlit-colored hair was caught up in an elaborate crown of braids that he'd seen other Traveler women wear. Until this past month, she'd always adopted the simpler styles of the Rederni. The braids suited her, he thought. She was wearing Traveler clothing, too: loose trousers and a long loose tunic that hit the bottoms of her knees.

Hennea was beautiful, but Seraph stirred him more than a woman who was merely beautiful ever could. She had such inner strength that he was sometimes surprised by how small she was. He'd once seen her back down a roomful of angry men with nothing more than the sharpness of her tongue.

Watching her as she quivered with eagerness, like a fine hunting hound awaiting the horn, he was struck with a sudden, wrenching understanding.

This was his wife, his Seraph, who'd given up everything she was to escape from the endless battle her people fought against things like the mistwight. She'd married him hoping that it would keep her out of battles just like this one. Oh, she said now that it was because she loved him—but he knew Seraph. If she had not dreaded returning to the duties of a Raven, she would never have accepted his offer of marriage.

He'd always felt that he'd helped to save her from something terrible, but she didn't look like someone who needed rescuing.

She held her hands palm down over the well: tension flowed up her body from toes to fingertips, and the sharp, sparkling feeling that was magic brushed over his skin in an
uneasy caress. With a hollow boom that shook the ground he stood upon, flame boiled suddenly out of the well in a searing wave of destruction. The roof caught fire first, then the walls of the sheltering building, the frail strands of weeds that surrounded the well house, followed an instant later by the post Seraph held on to.

Heedless of his damaged knees, Tier dove through the flames and caught Seraph around the waist, jerking her off the well and away from the fire. He had her on the ground and rolled her over twice before he realized that her clothes had not kindled and she was laughing.

He released her abruptly, but she sat up and kept her hands on him, brushing over his sleeves and quenching the smoldering fabric.

“I overdid it,” she said, with a grin he recognized as the expression of action-drunk joy that sometimes caught warriors in the height of battle. He'd never seen her look more lovely.

He'd never been so angry with her, either—she could have killed herself.

There was a sharp crack of sound behind them, and Tier jerked around to see Seraph's flames whoosh out of existence as quickly as they had come, leaving the shed that protected the well blackened but unharmed.

As Hennea lowered her hands to her side after quenching the fire, something dark and smoking slipped over the rim of the well. It darted past Tier in an attempt to reach the nearby woodland; its pace so rapid he was left with scattered impressions of sparse wiry hair over wrinkled skin and sapphire eyes. The wolf who was Jes was only a little slower.

“The wight!” shouted Benroln.

An arrow intercepted the beast before Benroln finished the last syllable of its name. The thing rolled end over end several times, and Jes was upon it.

Dust and fur and darkness tangled until Tier couldn't tell one creature from the other. But evidently Lehr had no such problem. A second arrow found flesh, then a third and fourth.

Jes separated himself, then shook his fur to rid it of dust and dried grass. The mistwight struggled weakly for a few seconds more, three of Lehr's arrows stuck up from hip, neck, and rib. A fourth, broken off a handspan from the tip,
protruded from its eye. Its ribs rose twice more and stilled.

Dead, it seemed to take up much less space than it had alive.

Seraph lay back down and laughed. She turned to Tier, and the smile slid from her eyes. “What's wrong, Tier?”

He forced a smile and shook his head. She didn't deserve his anger. It wasn't her fault that she enjoyed the spice of danger—he knew the feeling himself, but it unsettled him to see it in his wife. Not just because she had risked her life, either.

“Nothing, love. Let me give you a hand up.”

This is what she had been born to do, he thought, as they strode back to the smith's hut like a small triumphant army after Hennea disposed of the mistwight's body with another bout of flame.

He could feel her outgrowing the home they'd forged together. He'd tried to ignore the changes in her since she and their sons had ridden to his rescue, but today had forced him to face them head-on. To save him, Seraph had taken up the mantle of her Order again.

He couldn't see how she'd ever pull herself small enough to live on the farm and be nothing but a farmer's wife again. Even if she tried to set her power aside a second time, he wasn't certain if he could allow it, not remembering the joy on her face as the well lit with flames.

C
HAPTER
2

“No wonder he was out in the middle of nowhere. If there were a good smith nearby, he'd starve to death,”
said Benroln sourly as his sturdy bay kept pace with the little horse Tier rode. Brewydd had appropriated Skew for the ride back to the clan's camp with Tier's blessing. Lehr had had to carry the exhausted healer back to the horses, but the smith's wounded would recover.

“The smith's work is good enough by the local standards,” Tier told Benroln. “You can't expect master-level bladecrafting from a man who makes mostly nails and plowshares. If you'd asked for a plow, doubtless you'd have been better pleased.”

“We have not the slightest need for a plow,” grumbled Benroln. “Or nails either. But either would have done us more good than three braces of ill-balanced, rough-handled knives.”

“Then your own smith can use the metal to make something more suitable,” soothed Tier. “You know as well as I that the real benefit you gained this day is that next time you—or any Traveler—comes by here, you will be welcomed and treated fairly.”

“Is Benroln still complaining?” Seraph came up to ride by Tier's side. She gave Benroln a steady look. “If you'd really
wanted a good bargain, you'd have driven it before we killed the mistwight and Brewydd healed his family. Afterward, you get what he gives and be grateful for it.”

Benroln muttered an excuse and dropped back to talk with someone who would listen to him with a more sympathetic ear.

“The knives aren't so bad,” said Tier. “They're just not up to the standards of the clan's smith.”

Seraph watched him closely. “What's wrong?”

“My knees,” he lied. She saw too much with her clear-eyed gaze. “They'll be fine.”

He would lose her, he thought. She would stay with him for a while because the children needed her and because she'd given her word to him. But the boys were young men already, and their daughter was no longer a helpless child. How long would his love cage her from the life she was born to?

She'd grown into a woman who could deal with the responsibilities she'd come to him to escape. She was Raven, and he thought perhaps for the first time he understood what that meant.

“We can stop for a while and give your knees a chance to rest,” said Seraph. “Brewydd could probably use the rest as well.”

“No”—he shook his head—“Brewydd is tired, but all she has to do is sit on Skew until we make it back to camp. As for my knees, I just walked too far today. My knees will be fine. No fun, but a long way from unbearable.”

Unbearable was that he could see no way to hold Seraph without destroying her; by comparison his knees were nothing. “I'll be fine.”

Midmorning the next day they came to a crossroads, and Benroln called a halt. As soon as everyone had stopped he strode directly to Tier and Seraph.

“We are called to the southern fork,” he said in a tight voice.

Seraph smiled at him. “Is this the first time?”

Benroln nodded jerkily.

“Some leaders never hear the call,” she told him, then glancing at Tier, she explained. “When the clan's help is needed, the
leader of a clan knows. It spoke to my brother. He told me it's like a whisper or a tugging string.”

“A string,” said Benroln, his face a little flushed. “It pulls my heart. My father said his father had it—but I never really believed.”

“You go on then,” said Tier. “We'll continue west on our own. It's not far now.”

Benroln's face lost the absent look it had held. “You have to come with us. Without you we have only me and the Healer. Brewydd says that there is another Shadowed.”

Tier looked around. “I see a lot of people. Surely you don't dismiss everyone without an Order as useless?”

Benroln gave a huff of frustration. “You know what I mean.”

Tier nodded. “I do. But I have a young daughter staying with my folk—who've no magic at all. Now, when my sons were chasing the Shadowed—”

“We don't know he was the Shadowed,” said Seraph.

“All right,” agreed Tier. “But if he wasn't another like the Unnamed King, then he was wearing the robes of one of the Masters of the Secret Path, so he must have been a wizard. I'm minded then, that he was killing off Travelers and stealing their Orders just as the others were. He's not going to be best pleased with the people who destroyed his work—and I've the nasty suspicion that he's going to hold me mostly to blame for it, despite the fact I spent most of the battle chained up and helpless. Benroln, my daughter Rinnie is staked out in Redern like the bait in a mountain-cat trap. I'll not leave her alone any longer than I can help.”

“How do you know that he knows anything at all about your daughter? The wizard, Shadowed or not, was in Taela—that's a long way from Redern.”

“The Path had someone watching our family,” Tier told him, feeling a trace of the anger that he'd felt when he'd first found out. What if they had decided to steal away one of the children instead of him? What if he had died? Would the Path have been able to pick off the children one by one? The thought brought an urgent need to have his family together, where he could keep an eye on all of them. He needed to get to Redern.

“He knows about Rinnie,” Tier said firmly. “I'm sorry, Benroln, but I won't risk her.”

“You'll find a way to do what you are called to do without us,” said Seraph.

Hennea, the other Raven, was not a member of Benroln's clan either, but had come to Seraph in Redern and traveled with his family when they rode to Taela, the capital of the Empire, to rescue him. She had no real ties to them.

“Perhaps Hennea will go with you,” suggested Tier.

Jes had jogged over to see what the delay was, Gura at his heel. The big dog had been reluctant to let any of them out of his sight since they'd gotten back from killing the mistwight, and tended to race back and forth from one of his people to another—sort of like Jes.

Before Benroln could reply to Tier's suggestion, Jes shook his head, and said positively, “Hennea stays with us.”

Tier raised his eyebrows, hiding the worry he felt about the budding relationship between Jes and Hennea. “Hennea's a Raven and will do as she wishes, Jes. I thought you'd know that, having grown up with your mother. Why don't you go find her and see what she says?”

Hennea usually liked to stay toward the back of the clan when they traveled. Jes found her there, talking with a half dozen or so people and Lehr, who smelled of mint and the herbs he must have been collecting for the Healer.

Lehr looked up, saw Jes, and asked, “Why are we stopped?”

Jes felt the weight of everyone's attention focus on him; their fear tangled with curiosity beat upon him. He didn't like it, and neither did the Guardian. He dropped his eyes to the ground and tried not to feel them or notice how they backed away.

“Benroln is called south,” he told the ground. “We're going on to Redern because Papa is afraid that the Shadowed might try and hurt Rinnie.”

The Guardian agreed with Papa. He also believed that the man they had chased was a Shadowed one, not just shadow-tainted.

Jes missed the first part of what Hennea said, though the
last of it—“I should go with Benroln”—was enough to bring the Guardian boiling to the surface.

“No,” Jes said, but that was all he could manage around the Guardian's growl, unheard by anyone else.

<
She comes with us! She is mine!
>

Jes agreed with the sentiment, but was certain that the Guardian's telling Hennea as much would be disastrous. So he fought to keep control. It didn't help that as the Guardian had arisen, the icy dread of his presence increased the fear of everyone around him. Their emotions roiled around him like the river in a storm, until Hennea put her hand on his arm, bringing with her the cool relief that was a part of her. He could still feel the others, but somehow, Hennea's presence managed to shield him from the worst of it.

“Why don't you take him away from everyone,” Lehr's calm voice soothed him, too. “You're not going to get any sense out of him with all these people around him.”

Hennea must have agreed because Jes found himself following her through the trees. As soon as they were out of sight of the others, their feelings died down to a murmur, but Hennea led him farther.

“I need you to come with us,” he told her.

She patted him on the arm—a motherly gesture—then crossed her arms in front of her chest and turned away. She found something interesting in the bark of a tree and traced patterns on the rough surface with a finger.

“You'll be fine,” she told the tree, though Jes assumed she was really talking to him. “There's no need for me to come with you. I've repaid the debt I owed to your mother for tricking her into killing Volis the priest. We've seen to it that the Secret Path won't be killing any more Travelers and stealing their Orders.”

Jes stared at her back. Did he mean nothing to her? Of course not. She'd been kind to him, rescued him, and in the process kissed him. Doubtless he wasn't the only man she'd ever kissed.

How could she care for him? Had he forgotten what he was? A madman who alternated between being a simpleton and a ravening beast. He should count himself lucky that she didn't run screaming.

<
Let me talk to her.
>

The Guardian had never asked him before, he'd just taken over if he could. Jes hesitated, remembering that first, possessive roar. But on the rare occasions when he was calm, the Guardian was better-spoken than Jes. Perhaps he could change her mind.

“We can't force her,” he said. Perhaps he shouldn't have said it aloud because Hennea didn't look happy when she turned around to stare at him, but the Guardian wasn't as good at hearing Jes as he was at hearing the Guardian. Jes didn't want the Guardian to make matters worse.

<
Please. She must come with us.
>

With a sigh, Jes let the Guardian overwhelm him.

“You can't force me,” said Hennea.

“No,” he agreed, stepping away because he thought he might be frightening her—though her face was composed. He didn't want to frighten her. “What do you intend to do now that your debt to my mother is remitted and the Path is rendered harmless?”

“I will seek out the Shadowed,” she said. “It may be that the man you chased through the tunnels of the Emperor's castle was just another
solsenti
wizard. But if not, it would be disastrous to allow him to run free.”

The Guardian lowered his eyelids, trying to look unthreatening. It wasn't something he had a lot of practice at.

“My father told Benroln that the Shadowed is going to seek vengeance against us for the death of the Secret Path,” he said. “If you want to find him, you are more likely to find him in our company.”

“Or in Benroln's as he follows his call,” she said.

But her voice wasn't as firm as it had been.

“There was no clue to the Shadowed's identity in the papers left by the Path,” said the Guardian. “None of the servants knew anything, nor did any of the men the Emperor could have questioned. Only the wizards might have known who he was, and they were all killed the night the Path fell. There might still be records in the temples, but the Emperor could do nothing against either of the temples of the Five Gods in Taela because there was nothing that connected them
to the Path. In Redern, though, there is a temple ready to be searched.”

“We searched it already,” Hennea said.

“Did you? I thought two tired Ravens went through and did their best to find all the Ordered gemstones and anything that might bring harm to villagers who might go exploring. Did you read all of Volis's correspondence? Did you search for journals? Were you looking for a new Shadowed One?” He knew the answers to those questions—she did, too, because she didn't say anything.

“Then there are the Path's gemstones, also,” he murmured, trying hard to keep his triumph from showing. His relief. She was his to guard, as his family was his to guard. He could not have borne for them to be at risk and he not able to protect them all. He needed them to stay together. “Seraph will do her best to solve their secrets and free the Orders that are bound to the stones. She will not give them to you—I know her well enough to understand that she could never give that task to another, even if you do not. It matters too much to her.”
And to you
, he thought.

She bowed her head shallowly. “You are right,” she said serenely. “I will come. But I will not
stay
in Redern, Jes.” She rubbed her hands over her face, and it seemed to Jes that the gesture rubbed away some of her composure. “I cannot be more to you than I am. You are so young. You will find someone else. I am—” She stopped. Took a deep breath. “I was Volis's leman, Jes.” Her voice shook on the dead priest's name, though he could tell that she was doing her best to be impassive. It was fortunate for the priest that he was already dead.